


Outside of a Dog

by chaosmanor



Category: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:36:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 41,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosmanor/pseuds/chaosmanor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I'm obscuring the names of the authors that are mentioned randomly in this fic, to prevent drive-by googling. I know about science fiction authors and their vanity googling, and I don't need anyone dropping into my RPS accidentally that way.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm obscuring the names of the authors that are mentioned randomly in this fic, to prevent drive-by googling. I know about science fiction authors and their vanity googling, and I don't need anyone dropping into my RPS accidentally that way.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [outside of a dog](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/outside+of+a+dog)  
  
---|---  
  
Title: Outside of a Dog  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Rating: It's going to be for grownups only. Expect sex.  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.  
Acknowledgments: A large tip of the keyboard to AlXson BechdXl, whose 'verse I might have borrowed from a little.

 

Notes: I'm obscuring the names of the authors that are mentioned randomly in this fic, to prevent drive-by googling. I know about science fiction authors and their vanity googling, and I don't need anyone dropping into my RPS accidentally that way.

Those of you who know me in Real Life will know I manage a bookshop for my day job. Hee. Not all the stupid stuff in here is fictional. Anything involving customer service probably happened.

 

 

Patrick was working on a List of things he Hated about his job. It was a detailed List, because he was a details kind of person, having a details kind of day.

The woman standing beside Patrick sighed, weighing the two books she was holding, and Patrick wanted to give her his lecture about how fantasy novels were only getting fatter and fatter because publishers had worked out that the customers could be suckered in by the increased Point of Sale satisfaction of a larger purchase for the same price, not because the story warranted extended telling.

He didn't mention that though. "The BrXdley is a classic read," he suggested. "Though not without its faults. The McIntXsh is evil crap. It's your choice."

The customer looked at Patrick and handed him the BrXdley. "Okay. I'll go with classic over evil crap then."

Patrick took the book back to the counter and rang it up, ignoring the poisonous stares from Jezzie, who was his boss that day, and remembering to say goodbye to the customer.

"Patrick…" Jezzie started, and Patrick turned around to look at her.

"It's my break," he said. "Are you okay here for ten minutes? And I'll lie about lots of things, for the customers, but I won't lie about absolute rubbish fantasy novels that you're only carrying because they're written by women, and have females on the covers."

Jezzie sighed. "Go and take your break. There are cookies out the back."

In theory, cookies should be good, but Patrick added cookies to the List of Hateful things and put the lid back on the container and hunted hopefully around the staff room at the back of the co-op bookshop.

Cookies made from grated zucchini, sprouted grains and sesame seeds weren't cookies. Coffee made from caffeine-free coffee-substitute, milk-free cream-substitute and boiling water wasn't coffee. A break was still a break though, so Patrick ducked out the back door of the bookshop, and headed for the megacorporation-owned coffee outlet down the block, in search of actual sustenance.

He scored a stool, at one of the counters, and pulled a book from his pocket, juggling it between his double shot latte and his chocolate chip cookie. HXlting StXte, by ChXrles StrXss. Written by an actual man. Grudgingly ordered through the lesbian feminist bookstore his mother owned a share of, with his staff discount. He only worked there for the staff discount, and because he had to work somewhere, and at least he could be as out as he wanted at a lesbian bookstore.

The timer on his phone went off, so Patrick downed the last of his coffee, pocketed his book, which was a fucking good read, and Mad Wombyn Books should be carrying it, because StrXss' partner was a well known queer rights activist, and headed back to work, still eating his cookie.

The List of Hate just got longer, of course.

In general, Patrick liked the young dykes that came into the bookstore, and they seemed to like him. The one that was leaning across the sex toy counter, examining the tray of dildoes he'd lifted out, certainly seemed to like him.

"So," the dyke said. "What would you recommend? Glass, latex or silicone?"

Patrick Stump, book and sex toy salesclerk. Why him?

"It depends what you want it for," Patrick said. "Glass looks great, really classy, and the cold feeling can be good. The latex is cheap, which means that you could buy lots of different toys. And the silicone is really durable, and you can heat it up to body temperature, and boil it. It's dishwasher safe, too."

He really didn't want to go to the dishwasher place, not even in daylight. Other people had normal parents.

The dyke, who couldn't have been more than eighteen, smiled at Patrick, all cute with freckles and shaved head, and picked up a silicone probe. "But what do _you_ like?"

"Men," Patrick said.

The dyke laughed. "Okay, not something that is on the tray then."

Patrick shook his head.

She put the silicone toy back, and hefted a glass anal screw experimentally. "I'll take this one. I'll need some lube too."

Patrick took the demonstration toy off her and put it back in the tray, and handed her a boxed version of the toy, then took out the sample pumps of lube. "Vegetable-based, water-based or silicone?" Patrick said. "Flavored or purportedly tasteless? I can pass opinions on staining, if you're worried."

He really hated his job.

The dyke shrugged her shoulders in her pleather jacket, rattling her handcuffs and chains, and began squirting and tasting her way through the sample bottles, while Patrick kicked at the back of the counter and thought about working at McDonalds.

"The passionfruit one?" the dyke asked, and Patrick looked up from putting the tray of demonstration sex toys away. "Does it have pips in it?"

"Only if you put them there," Patrick said. "They're not standard."

Why? Why would anyone want pips in lube? There was a whole world of sexual practice that he was missing out on.

The dyke read the ingredients on the eggplant-based lube and frowned. "I think I should buy this one, just on environmental grounds, but it doesn't feel very slippery."

"Trust me," Patrick said. "There are times, when you're really going for it, when you need silicone lube. Get the good stuff."

The dyke looked at him, wide-eyed, and Patrick shrugged.

"Okay," she said. "The silicone lube it is. And I'll have some vegan condoms."

Patrick added a box of a dozen vegan condoms to the collection on the counter and revised the dyke's status to bisexual.

"My girlfriend's a radical vegan," she told Patrick, while he rang up her purchases. "I hope she'll use the silicone lube."

"There are no animal products in it," Patrick assured her, taking her credit card. "My radical vegan friend swapped to it, after an, um, negative experience with the eggplant stuff."

A paralyzing funny negative experience. Andy should have known better than to try to explain anything to the rest of them. Who would have thought the stuff was flammable like that?

The dyke--Patrick had revised her status back again--strolled out of the store, carrying her paper bag of equipment, and Jezzie appeared from the staff room, just as Patrick sat heavily on the worn carpet behind the counter.

"You handled that well," Jezzie said. "The young girls really like asking you for advice. That was a big sale."

"Please don't make me do that again," Patrick said, struggling back to his feet, and he found himself enveloped in Jezzie's fat arms, pushed against her ample, free range bosom, smothered in mammaries, patchouli and estrogen.

She kissed his head, mercifully through his hat, and Patrick climbed out of the embrace, grateful that a customer had wandered in, just in time to save him.

"Hi there," Patrick said, and the woman glowered at him.

"Who is your favorite science fiction author?" the woman demanded, copy of an UrsXla Le GuXn book in her hand.

The correct answer was JXn ScalXi! but Patrick wasn't allowed to say that.

"MXriane De PXerres," Patrick said cheerfully.

"Who?"

"Australian author who writes gritty cyberpunk," Patrick said. "And her latest space opera series is really good too. What about you?"

"JoXnna RXss," the woman said. "Is there someone sane working here today?"

Patrick turned and grinned at Jezzie. "Jezzie will help you. I have to go stock the sex toys."

Jezzie walked past Patrick, glaring at him, but he just glared back at her.

At the end of the day, Jezzie leaned against the counter, while Patrick counted the cash and balanced the till.

"That was a good day," Jezzie said, when Patrick handed her the print outs. "Well done."

"So, are you going to fire me?" Patrick asked hopefully, and Jezzie shook her head.

"I don't think a lone member of the co-op can anyway. We'd have to have a meeting, and achieve consensus. And with your mom being a member, she wouldn't let us."

"Nepotism, alive and well," Patrick said. "Guess I have to come back tomorrow then."

Someone banged on the glass of the closed store door, beside the poster for the next Right to Marry march.

"Look who's here," Jezzie said delightedly. "It's Compost! She was at your birth too!"

The List of things Patrick Hated just got longer.

 

***

The door to Pete and Joe's apartment was unlocked, so Patrick walked in without knocking.

"Hey!" he called out, putting his pack loaded with Dungeons and Dragons rules books and cans of soda on the couch in the hope of reserving an actual seat on it without the need to thumb wrestle anyone for a spot.

"Wah!" Pete shouted back inarticulately from his room, so Patrick bounded down the hall and through the curtain that substituted for a door on Pete's room.

Pete met him in a midair collision, and the pair of them went backwards, onto the mattress on the floor. Patrick stuck his nose against Pete's neck and breathed in deeply, and said, "Oh fuck, bad day."

Pete hugged him tightly, and didn't complain when Patrick just kept breathing in the smell of Pete's skin, not even when most ordinary people, with actual personal boundaries, would have beaten Patrick off.

Instead, Pete shoved a hand in between Patrick's jeans and his boxers and grabbed his ass.

"Not that kind of hug, Pete," Patrick said.

"But?" Pete said, removing his hand far more slowly than he'd put it there. "Don't you want to sleep with me?"

Patrick sighed and pushed himself off Pete a little. "Have you still got a take-a-ticket machine on your bedroom door?"

Pete shrugged. "Um, so I'm popular?"

"If you'll fuck strangers, then you can let your best friend smell you after a bad day," Patrick said. "I hate my job. I'm drowning in estrogen. Women keep hugging me. I need testosterone, and you have lots."

Pete made a long-suffering face and threw his arms back on his mattress.

"I do," he said. "And you're welcome to it. I'll even pretend it's not hot when you do this."

Patrick shoved his face against Pete's chest. "Yet another woman turned up today who had been at my birth. She wanted to cuddle me."

"Dude, this is the seventh or eighth one, isn't it?"

Patrick nodded and pushed Pete's T-shirt up, sniffing the warm skin of his belly. "And they all want to tell me how I was all red and screamed, and how long it took, and how beautiful it was. I can't deal with that, not any longer."

"That tickles," Pete said, squirming a little when Patrick rubbed his nose and chin against Pete's skin.

Patrick sighed, and Pete said, "Um, if you're going lower, this could get complicated…"

"Deviant."

Patrick slid down the mattress, ignoring the feeling of gritty sheets under his knees. He closed his eyes and let his cheek rest against the worn denim of Pete's jeans, over his hipbone.

Yeah, that was close enough that it was like being smacked in the face with masculinity, all the pheromones that Patrick could ever want. He must have made a happy noise because Pete laughed the kind of laugh that wasn't mocking, and was all about shared amusement, and Pete's hand nudged the back of Patrick's neck, holding him more securely.

Joe's voice, from the doorway, said, "Whoa. I come home from work early, and look what I find. What's the game?"

Joe worked as a gardener. Kind of. For a hydroponics specialist. Who had a very special crop. At least that's what Patrick thought he might do, since Joe never talked about his work.

"Patrick is sniffing my groin," Pete said.

The mattress moved, so Joe must have knelt on it. Patrick wasn't going to open his eyes to find out.

Yep, Patrick could smell Joe now too, all sweaty and, um, smoky, from work.

"If he's sniffing you, what are you doing?" Joe asked.

"I'm having this really hot fantasy."

Joe's head was in Patrick's line of sight when Patrick cracked his eyes open for a second. Pete was having a good time, by the looks of things.

"Am I in the fantasy too?" Joe asked.

"No. Please be quiet, things are getting serious."

"If I'm not in the fantasy, then that's okay," Joe said, and Patrick could hear Joe sniffing too.

After another minute, Pete's fingers on Patrick's neck tightened, and Pete said, "Okay, that's enough. Everyone who doesn't want to be here for the grand finale should leave the room now."

"Thanks, for, you know," Patrick said, climbing over Pete's knees.

"Mutually beneficial and all that," Pete said. "Just close the curtain."

In the living room, while Patrick unpacked his books for gaming, Joe said, "You guys are weird."

"What?" Patrick said.

"Never mind," Joe said. "Did you put your dice through the dishwasher, like you threatened?"

"Sure did. And I bought Games Master dice, with last week's pay. I hope you're all ready to go fight the dragon this week."

"What are GM dice?" Joe asked.

Patrick unzipped his pouch of dice and handed the blank six-sided dice over to Joe. "Be afraid," Patrick said. "I get to make up the numbers I want when I roll those ones."

Joe dropped the dice like they were poisonous, pulling a face. "That's evil!"

Patrick stacked his Fourth Edition AD&amp;D rule books on the coffee table, making sure he slid _The Concerned Citizen's Guide to Surviving Nuclear, Biological and Terrorist Attack_ and _Surgical Emergencies_ under the stack of books. Joe wouldn't notice, but Andy and Pete would spend the entire gaming session in a state of panic, with their characters looking for nuclear weapons and trying to remember how to perform an appendectomy with a spoon, all because of a couple of suspicious book titles.

Pete emerged from the shower, damp and clean, to throw himself on the couch across Patrick. "Don't want to game now," Pete said. "Let's just order pizza and spend the evening arguing."

"How is that different from gaming?" Patrick asked. "Besides, I've thought of something I want to try out…"

Pete sighed, rolling over to look at the pile of books, and Patrick felt the jolt of tension as Pete spotted the extra books.

"So, usual bribes still working?" Pete asked.

"Same rate of trade," Patrick said.

"That is so unfair," Joe said. "I can't believe you let people barter to keep their characters alive."

Patrick shrugged. "It's not like it's sexual favors," he said. "Which would possibly exclude you. It's only laundry. If you want to wash my clothes to stop your paladin from being turned into toasted marshmallows, I'm open to that."

"I had a bad day too," Pete said. "I don't think it was as bad as yours though. I just want to tell you that."

"What happened?" Patrick asked. Pete worked for Buns and Noodles, which the Mad Wombyn co-op called the Evil Empire. At least Pete didn't have to sell sex toys as well… Which was possibly a good thing.

"That book came out, you know that stupid sparkling vampire book. I spent the day alternating between unpacking cartons of the fucking thing, dodging hordes of twelve year old girls, and trying not to hit on the girls' mothers."

"You're not allowed to hit on the mothers?" Patrick asked.

"Or the girls," Pete said. "My department manager had a Talk with me this morning. Apparently, she had concerns about my behavior."

"Who'd you bang this time?" Joe asked.

"When?" Pete asked. "Recently? That would be Rachel, the new girl in Non-fiction. And maybe Adam, though I wouldn't count that as actual banging. That was more, um, indiscriminate making out."

"Assholes," Joe said. "How dare they tell you who you can grope at work?"

The front door swung open, and Andy called out, "Hey there, fellow wage slaves!"

Patrick slid out of Pete's arms and jumped at Andy as he walked down the hall. Pete called out, "Watch out, he's had a bad day!"

"Hi there," Andy said, hugging Patrick back. "How bad?"

Patrick managed a surreptitious sniff of Andy's neck and hair, before letting go. He didn't have the same kind of intimacy with Andy as he did with Pete, which was a source of sorrow for him, and meant he had to sneak Andy-sniffs in when he could.

"I tried to get fired. How about you?"

"Had to work late, hence the crappy clothes." Andy was still wearing the compulsory long-sleeved business shirt and dark pants his employer insisted on, but he was pulling the shirt off as walked into the living room, revealing the long-sleeved T-shirt he wore under it to hide his tattoos.

Patrick hung over the back of the easy chair Andy flopped into, grabbing another hug, because an Andy-straight-from-work was an Andy-who-hadn't-showered, and Patrick was still getting over his day.

Back on the couch, Pete draped over him again, Patrick picked up the pizza menu, his notepad and the dice. "Right," he said. "Pizza first. A D4 for the base, a D6 for the sauce, and four rolls on the D20 for the toppings. Andy gets the vegan special. Anyone who argues is volunteering their character to show how the monster works."

The pizza ordered, with a minimum of bickering, Patrick popped a can of toxic soda and said, "Andy? Why would a radical vegan lesbian want vegan condoms?"

Joe's jaw dropped, and Pete stopped flicking through the Monster Manual, trying to second guess Patrick's plans for the game by looking for post-it notes, his eyes suddenly interested.

Andy nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. There are no vegan dental dams, so the dykes I know have to buy vegan condoms and cut them open to use."

"What's a dental dam?" Joe asked.

"It's a sheet of latex, used for safe oral sex," Patrick said. "It can be tricky to use at first, so take some time to experiment with your partner, and remember, it may take both of you to hold it in place."

Joe said, "What?" and Patrick added yet another thing to his List of Hate.

Pete hugged him, and said, "Crazy."

"You need another job," Andy added.

While they were eating the pizza, and Andy and Pete were frantically exchanging greasy notes about the Books of Fear, Joe said, "How much money have you all got?"

"Four dollars and fifteen cents," Pete said. "And I need that for lunch tomorrow."

"I've got about twenty dollars on me," Patrick said.

"Same," Andy said. "Why are you trying to borrow money from us?"

"I'm not," Joe said, picking a chunk of pineapple off his slab of pizza. "I hate pineapple. Who puts pineapple on pizza just because they rolled a sixteen? I just think maybe we should buy a bookstore. Or start one. And I wanted to know who much you all had saved up."

Patrick put down his chunk of pizza and looked at Joe. "I've got just over five thousand dollars."

"Nothing," Pete said. "I'm broke. When I said four dollars and fifteen cents, that's all I have in the world. My folks might lend me money though."

Andy wiped his hands on his T-shirt and reached for the notepad that Patrick had rolled up their pizza order on. "I've got fifteen thousand, some of it in a term deposit that I can't access."

"I've got a bit," Joe said. "And mine is all easy to access." That was Joe-speak for 'fifty thousand dollars in a tin under the bed', Patrick suspected.

Andy was scribbling calculations on the notepad, and he paused to look at Patrick. "Start up value of stock?"

"Fifteen thousand retail," Patrick said. "We'd get some of that on line of credit, the rest we'd have to pay for on delivery. All of it would be wholesale."

"Terms?"

"Sixty to ninety days," Patrick said.

"Are you serious?" Pete asked, his arm around Patrick's shoulder tightening. "Are you fucking serious?"

Patrick squeezed Pete back, hard as he could.

"Shh," Andy said. "I'm trying to work out what the outgoings would be…"

Joe grinned, sprawled back in his easy chair. "Am I good, or what?"

"You're a fucking genius," Pete said.

Andy looked at Pete and Patrick. "Can you both live on minimum wage with no benefits?"

Patrick nodded, because he still lived with his mom, and he couldn't imagine she'd cut him off from lentils and green vegetables, as long as he paid something towards his board and didn't clutter up the house every day.

"I'm already on minimum wage," Pete said. "And do you really think Buns and Noodles actually give me benefits? They make sure I work half an hour less each week than the threshold for anything like that. Can I make passes at the mothers of all the teenage customers?"

"Better than picking up the teenagers," Andy said. "Definitely."

"Yes!" Pete shouted, bouncing across Patrick randomly, spilling soda. "I can MILF on company time."

"Calm down," Patrick said, wiping pointlessly at the soda on his jeans. "The man with the ability to add numbers is working."

Andy looked at the notepad and grinned. "If we can lease a retail outlet for almost nothing, then we can do this, assuming that Joe has a large amount of cash to start us up, and the rest of us put in what we can."

Pete took out his wallet and pulled out a bill and a handful of coins and put them on the coffee table. "Fuck eating tomorrow," he said. "I'm in."

Patrick opened his wallet and took out his ATM card, then slapped in on top of Pete's cash. "Me too."

Andy turned to a new page on the notepad. "This is what we need, before we can even look for a place to lease. We have to register a company name, and then file the company papers, then lodge multiple tax registrations. Then we'll need to open a merchant account with a bank..."

"We can't quit tomorrow," Patrick reminded Pete in an undertone, while Andy listed increasingly complex administrative tasks. "You do realize that, right?"

Pete sighed. "Yeah. But when the department manager yells at me for looking down someone's fucking mother's cleavage, when the mother is just offering the goodies to me, I can hang onto the thought of quitting, even if I can't hang onto the tits."

"How do you cope with being you?" Patrick asked in a whisper. "Isn't it tiring?"

"How do you manage not to fuck all the dykes? I couldn't sell sex toys to lesbians, honestly. I don't have the fortitude for that."

The notepad hit Patrick in the face, making him flinch and glare at Andy, who grinned back at him.

"Are we going to game?" Joe asked plaintively. "Because I feel like celebrating by slaughtering some trolls or something."

"Sure," Patrick said. "Before we start, everyone remind me how many hit points you each have."

The room was silent, then Pete said, "Shit."

Patrick grinned. His bad day was so much better.


	2. Outside of a Dog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm obscuring the names of the authors that are mentioned randomly in this fic, to prevent drive-by googling. I know about science fiction authors and their vanity googling, and I don't need anyone dropping into my RPS accidentally that way.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [outside of a dog](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/outside+of+a+dog)  
  
---|---  
  
Title: Outside of a Dog  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Rating: It's going to be for grownups only. Expect sex.  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.  
Acknowledgments: A large tip of the keyboard to AlXson BechdXl, whose 'verse I might have borrowed from a little.

Notes: I'm obscuring the names of the authors that are mentioned randomly in this fic, to prevent drive-by googling. I know about science fiction authors and their vanity googling, and I don't need anyone dropping into my RPS accidentally that way.

 

Chapter Two

After the first attempt at looking at properties ended badly, Andy shoved the bundle of company papers at Joe and Pete and sent them off to deal with the administration while he and Patrick looked at empty stores.

Patrick pushed his hat on more securely as he got back into Andy's car. "Did you get that agent's name?"

Andy nodded. "And the company she worked for. I won't even bother looking at properties listed with them, not after that."

Patrick opened the map book up again. "I'd like to claim that I can't believe Pete would do that, but I'd be lying."

"Yep," Andy said, pushing the classifieds section of the paper across to Patrick, along with his phone. "You call, get the next address, while I fight the traffic."

Andy parked his ancient sedan two blocks away from the next address, just to stop the real estate agent from getting a glimpse of it. The address hadn't sounded good, but it translated better into a streetscape, with cafés and bars instead of launderettes and warehouses.

"There's a venue around here," Andy said. "Isn't there?"

"Next block," Patrick said. "Pete drags me there. It's not a bad place, does Edge nights, that sort of thing."

"Down here?" Andy asked, and Patrick pointed at the A-frame sign at the beginning of the strip mall.

"Panic Toys?" Patrick said. "I had no idea they were here…"

"A toy shop?" Andy asked, following Patrick down the strip mall, past clothing boutiques, a bar and a café.

"Merchandising," Patrick said, pressing his face against the glass window of Panic Toys, peering at the racks of imported Doctor Who figures and Top Gear Poseable Crash Test Dummies.

Andy looked over Patrick's shoulder. "You know, you usually only sound that way about pizza."

"And JXn ScalXi," Patrick added. "Except Joe banned me from ever mentioning his name again."

"So where's the empty store?" Andy asked, looking around, hand on Patrick's shoulder, guiding him away from Panic Toys, where a very cute boy was waving at Patrick from behind the counter.

The empty store was at the other end of the mall, sandwiched between a hairdresser and a nail salon, the sidewalk reeking of poisonous fumes from the nail salon.

Patrick looked through the window, at the shell of a store, vacant apart from a sink dangling drunkenly off the back wall. The window was streaky, the floor covered in rubbish, and the paint on the front façade announced that he could get piercing, branding and traditional tattooing done there.

"Erch," Andy said.

Patrick turned around, so he was leaning back against the window, and looked up and down the sidewalk. "The location is just about perfect. Isn't there a comic shop on the next block too?"

Andy nodded. "It's a good one, too. I have an account there."

"Comic store, toy store--all that's missing is a science fiction bookstore."

"Geek central," Andy said. "I'll call the agent, arrange to have a look inside. Do you think Pete and Joe will sulk if they're not here?"

"Unbearably, but after this morning, Pete is never allowed near a person in any kind of position of authority or power again."

Patrick had discovered that he couldn't tell any of the real estate agents apart, and the new one looked exactly the same as all the others. This one was male, wearing the obligatory sharp suit, with sunglasses balanced on his head and cell phone against his ear.

He unlocked the empty store door and let Andy and Patrick in, but didn't follow them in.

Patrick put his hand across his nose and mouth to block out the smell of mouse shit and mold, while Andy flicked light switches at random.

Rows of fluorescent lights flickered into life, flooding the empty store with light, and Patrick picked his way through the rubbish, to the back of the store.

"It's filthy," Andy said, his voice low. "But that can be fixed."

Patrick shrugged. "What is it? Twenty feet? By Forty? And that's all usable floor space. A bit less if we partition off a store room in a corner."

The agent stepped prissily through the mess. "Looks like the last tenants left a bit of mess."

"Two weeks rent free in exchange for cleaning it up," Andy said.

"What's out the back?" Patrick asked, trying the handle of the door set in the back wall of the store.

The agent shrugged and sorted through the keys in his hand, until he found one that unlocked the door. Patrick swung it open, and looked out at a yard overgrown with weeds, toilet block in one corner, dumpsters against the far wall, laneway beside them.

"Basic facilities," the agent said.

"What are the outgoings?" Andy asked, pulling a notepad and pen out of his shirt pocket. "What period tenancy is available?"

Patrick left Andy and the agent haggling over easements, and went to prod the walls of the store, to work out if they'd hold the weight of industrial shelving. He should call the others…

"Hey!" Pete said breathlessly over the phone. "What are you doing?"

"Wondering if there are insects that eat plaster and bricks," Patrick said. "What about you?"

"I'm bored. Our number hasn't been called yet, so Joe has gone off to run a delivery. When he gets back, I'm going to get some food. Are you looking at a store?"

"Yep. It's near that club we went to a couple of weeks ago, the night you picked up that girl with the thing for The Lumberjack Song."

Pete chuckled. "Yeah! Chemical Love, that place! What's the store like?"

"Joe's bedroom, but with less wildlife."

"That's not good, is it?" Pete asked.

"Gotta go," Patrick said, as the agent and Andy shook hands.

In the strip mall, after the agent had locked the store up and left, Andy put his arm around Patrick's shoulders. "If I can get the spreadsheet to work with that rent, do you think we should take this one?"

Patrick nodded. "Geek central."

***

They couldn't have pizza for dinner, because Andy had barred all future fast food purchases on financial grounds, so Patrick poked at his bowl of ramen unhappily and thought about skewering Joe with his fork instead.

"Fallout Buoy?" Andy asked again, his voice rising. "Fallout Buoy Incorporated? What the fuck happened, Joe?"

"I thought that's what we agreed on," Joe said. "Isn't it?"

"Fall Out Boy!" Andy shouted. "Just like it was written on the piece of paper in your hand!" He turned to look at Pete. "And where were you? You, at least, shouldn't have been smoking joints in the toilets at the Corporate Licensing Department."

"I went to get some food," Pete said. "I didn't know our number would be called while I was gone."

Andy stared at Pete, long and hard, and Pete swallowed.

"Okay, I was gone a while," Pete admitted. "I told Joe to ring me, when our number was called."

Patrick put his bowl down and threw himself back on the couch, hat jammed over his eyes. "Are we stuck with a stupid name for the store now?" he asked.

Andy sighed. "We can probably still license the name Fall Out Boy, and be Fallout Buoy trading as Fall Out Boy, you fuckers. It's just going to look really odd on the checks."

"We're sorry," Pete said.

Patrick peered under the edge of his hat at Pete, and kicked Pete's shin. "Idiot."

Pete grinned at Patrick, and Patrick grinned back at him.

***

The agent held the keys out to Andy and nodded, then wandered off.

"That's it?" Pete asked.

"What? You expected roses or something?" Andy asked, sliding the key into the store door.

"Well, no," Pete said. "But I think we should all take turns carrying Patrick over the threshold."

Pete already had his arms around Patrick, which wasn't fair. Neither was Pete's idea of carrying, which mostly involved dragging and tickling.

Joe and Andy scooped Patrick up, inside the store, between them, and hoisted him back out, and Joe carried him in again, in a fireman's carry.

Pete and Joe took Patrick back out, to where Andy was waiting. "Behave yourself," Andy told Patrick, frowning at him.

Patrick pushed his glasses back on more securely and adjusted his hat. "I hate you all. I want a divorce."

"It's just wedding night nerves," Andy said, scooping Patrick up and staggering through the door with him. "You'll be fine, honey."

Pete found the lights as Andy put Patrick back down, and the four of them looked around the filthy store. "I'll get the gear from the pick up," Joe said. "We've got some work to do."

Two hours later, Pete and Patrick started tossing the sacks of rubbish into the back of Joe's pick up, now parked in the overgrown yard. Patrick sat on the steps at the back of the store, just for a moment, and Pete squatted beside him.

The rear door to one of the other businesses, across the yard, was propped open, and Pete whistled under his breath as a guy in black jeans and a ripped T-shirt dragged a trash can down the back steps.

"He's hot," Pete whispered.

Patrick had to agree, and he wasn't into dyed hair and smudged eye make up in quite the same way Pete was.

"I should go say hello," Pete said. "It would be polite." Pete's voice didn't sound polite.

Patrick grabbed his arm. "If you do, the three of us will hate you even more than we already do."

"You hate me?" Pete sounded genuinely hurt.

"Just a little," Patrick said. "And I know you can cry on demand, so stop that. I'll hate you a lot if you disappear before the cleaning and painting is finished."

Pete looked away, to where the hot guy was dragging the trash can across to the dumpster. "Okay, but I think everyone should appreciate the sacrifice I'm making."

Cute Guy waved at them, as he put the lid of the dumpster back down, and Patrick physically pulled Pete back inside the bookstore, closing the door securely behind them.

The roar of the industrial carpet cleaner was loud, even outside the shop, and Patrick didn't envy Andy and Joe, who were inside with the beast. Patrick was up a ladder, scrubbing the exterior paintwork and front window, while Pete held the ladder steady and insulted Patrick.

The stream of invective from Pete paused for a moment, and then Pete said, "Hi there," his voice interested and low.

Damn, Cute Guy must have found them. Now Patrick was going to be stranded.

Patrick looked down, and squawked.

Pete was flirting, definitely, biting his bottom lip, head tipped to one side so his hair fell across one eye. It was who he was flirting with that was the issue.

Patrick scrambled down the ladder, slopping water and dropping the scrubbing brush, trying to intercept an impending social disaster. The guy in the sleeveless T-shirt, with the shaved head, cropped beard and ear channels you could drive through might not be Pete's usual type, but that wasn't any guarantee that something hideous wasn't about to happen...

The guy stopped smiling at Pete and held out his arms to Patrick, and Patrick hugged him and went through the obligatory cheek-kissing.

"Um, hi," Patrick said, disentangling himself. "This is Pete, one of my friends and fellow bookstore owners. Pete, this is Morgan, my father."

"Nice to meet you, Pete," Morgan said. "So, Patrick, tell me about this bookstore. I had no idea you were old enough to own anything as complex as a business. I thought we were still at bicycles and X-box games."

"How did you find out? Did Mom call you?" Patrick had one eye on Pete, who was showing no signs of recovering, so it seemed better to lead Morgan into the store and signal for Andy to switch the carpet cleaner off than to wait for Pete to work out how to talk again.

"You know the deal with your mother," Morgan said. "Milestones, and that sort of thing, and she feels the need to call me."

The roaring of the cleaner stopped, and Andy and Joe looked expectantly at Patrick and Morgan. Pete slid in behind them, to stand beside Andy, still looking pale.

"This is my father, Morgan," Patrick said. "Morgan, this is Andy and Joe. The four of us are the owners of the store."

Andy, who had the advantage over Pete of not having just attempted to solicit Morgan for sex, held out his hand, and even Joe managed to be polite. Pete still had the look of someone who wanted to die, or be the subject of a mercy killing.

Morgan looked around the store and nodded approvingly. "Has your female progenitor seen the place?" he asked.

"Mom had a look before we signed the lease," Patrick said. "It seemed worth asking her opinion, since she owns part of a bookstore herself. She can't believe I want to do this, but said there was nothing wrong with the premises or the lease."

Morgan shrugged and opened the man-bag hanging over his shoulder, and took out a check book. "I'm sure you don't have enough money," he said, scribbling on a check. "You can consider this an early Christmas present, or something."

Patrick blinked and took the check that Morgan handed him. "Wow, thank you."

Morgan grinned at him. "As children go, you're amazingly low effort, and I appreciate that. Consider it a sign of appreciation for the fact I've never had to post bail for you."

Morgan kissed his cheeks again, and walked out of the store, and Joe said, "Um, dude, why does your father have bear paw tattoos on his shoulders?"

Pete sat down heavily on the wet carpet and smacked his forehead on the ground. "Please kill me."

"Why?" Andy asked.

Patrick nudged Pete with his sneaker. "Not so keen on MILFing now, are you?"

Pete made a gurgling noise.

"Oh," Andy said, sounding deeply amused. "Serves you fucking right."

"Patrick?" Joe asked. "Your mom is Julie, right?"

Patrick nodded. "You've met her, Joe, more than once."

"Thought so," Joe said. "She rides a bike everywhere, keeps a lot of cats, doesn't shave her legs, that sort of thing?"

"My mom is a lesbian," Patrick said. "Yes."

"How did your parents ever have you?"

Patrick stared at Joe for a moment, and sighed, and even Pete looked up from where he was still contemplating the soggy carpet.

Andy slapped Joe on the back. "Joe," Andy said. "Sometimes when two people love each other very much, one of them will give the other one a turkey baster, then they make a little Patrick."

Joe's eyes went wide. "Oh, do people really do that?"

"People who aren't straight," Patrick said. "Mom refers to it as an informal gay gene research project, where all the dykes and gay guys breed together like crazy, just to see what will happen."

"And what happens?" Joe asked.

"Well, I suspect the world gets lots of queer kids, and I get a father who turns up twice a year, for birthdays and Christmas," Patrick said. "And who just handed me a check for the business. I'm going back to scrubbing the window. Pete?"

Pete looked up at Patrick. "I'm so sorry, I really am."

"Hey, it's a mistake you can only make once," Patrick said. "I do have brothers, though, if you're going to be really squeamish."

Pete followed Patrick out of the store. "Brothers? Really? Brothers would be fine. Are they cute like you?"

"No," Patrick said, as the roar of the carpet cleaner started up again. "I got all the good looks in the family."

"What are your brothers like?" Pete asked, holding the bucket up for Patrick, once Patrick had climbed back up the ladder again. "Can you introduce me?"

Patrick flicked soapy water down at Pete. "No," Patrick said. "I'm not introducing you to my brothers. Hold the ladder steady, so I don't fall off."

"Is there anything else I need to know?" Pete asked. "Do you have any other ambush relatives? Anything..."

His voice trailed off, and someone said, "Hi there, we heard that the tattoo place had been leased."

"Hi," Pete said brightly. "I'm Pete, and this is Patrick. Andy and Joe are inside, with the nuclear-powered carpet cleaner."

Patrick looked down, at brown hair and arms waving around in a luridly floral shirt, and a guy looked up at him and smiled.

Uh oh, Pretty Boy alert time.

"I'm Brendon, from Panic Toys. What kind of business are you opening?"

"Science fiction book store," Pete said, and Brendon stopped smiling at Patrick and went back to smiling at Pete.

Patrick thought about dousing Pete in dirty water from the bucket, but resisted. Good friends didn't cock block, unless blood relatives or vile cleaning tasks were involved.

"...have coffee. We have an espresso machine, out the back of our store."

Vile cleaning tasks, indeed.

"Pete, if you disappear now, the three of us will hate you forever, remember," Patrick said. "We've already had this conversation today."

"I can bring the coffee here. Four coffees," Brendon said, looking up at Patrick. "Will that stop you from hating Pete?"

"Definitely," Patrick said. "And then we can talk about reciprocal staff discounts at the stores."

Brendon beamed at Patrick. "Excellent."

Patrick handed the bucket down to Pete and clambered down the ladder again, when Brendon had swished his way back up the sidewalk.

"You're some kind of evil genius," Pete said. "And I admire that in a friend. I wonder what Brendon will let me exchange for a discount..."

The roaring inside had stopped, so Patrick head-butted Pete comparitively amicably and went back inside, stepping cautiously across the wet carpet to where Andy and Joe were sitting on the back steps of the store.

"Help," Patrick said, squeezing in between them, whether they wanted him to or not. "Please help. I might need to hurt Pete if you don't."

Andy lifted an arm so Patrick could move in closer. Andy was soaking wet, so either Joe and Andy had been squirting each other from the newly repaired sink, or the carpet cleaner was impossibly heavy and Andy was drenched in sweat. Patrick contemplated licking Andy to find out, but he wasn't sure Andy would appreciate the kind of bonding he and Pete engaged in.

Joe patted Patrick's back, and Patrick sighed and closed his eyes.

Someone squirmed and kicked behind Patrick, and Pete said, "Did you tell them about the coffee?"

"We get coffee?" Joe asked.

"Delivered by the cute boy from Panic Toys," Pete said. "Brandon. Bronté. Bronson."

"Brendon," Patrick said.

"Brendon... Let me write that down," Pete said, and Andy's arm tightened around Patrick's shoulders, hugging him tighter.

"What's on the list of things to do, apart from drink coffee and fight the mold on the walls to prevent it from achieving sentience?" Joe asked.

"Empty Joe's pick up," Andy said. "Then fill it with the old shelving Patrick's mom is giving us."

"Buy paint. Apply paint to walls," Patrick said. "Remove paint from hair, eyes, clothing and skin."

"Install shelving," Joe said. "Paint shelving. Install counter, which doesn't exist yet. Install dividing walls for the store room, also non-existent."

"Then there's the non-existent stock control system, and entirely imaginary front-end for the store," Patrick added.

Pete leaned heavily against Patrick's back, his nose poking at one of the many muscles that ached. "And when does the stock start arriving?" Pete asked.

"Monday," Patrick said. "Along with the hardware for the front end."

It was Saturday afternoon.

Andy stretched, cracking his neck. "Let's run around like idiots for a bit, picking up paint and shelving, as well as clothes and sleeping bags. If we turn the heat up while we're gone, the carpet should dry, and we can just stay here for the weekend, and work all night, at least until we fall over."

"Sleep is for other people," Joe said, which was hilarious, given how fond they all knew Joe was of sleeping.

"Completely," Pete agreed.

That made more sense, since Patrick had crashed with Pete often enough to know that Pete didn't actually sleep, as far as he could tell.

"I like to sleep," Andy said. "Give me four hours, you bastards, or I won't function, no matter how much caffeine you coerce me into drinking."

"You can detox later," Pete said. "It'll give you something to do penance over, and you know you'll enjoy that."

Andy reached back and smacked Pete, and Patrick jumped down the steps, removing himself from the imminent slap-fight.

"Coffee!" Brendon called from the front of the store, distracting Pete, and Andy got a final slap in as Pete scrambled backwards across the wet carpet.

"I know this kid," Joe said, holding a hand out to Patrick, to pull him back up the steps. "He's one of the customers."

Patrick said, "Lalalalala, can't hear you," to Joe, and followed Andy into the store, to where Brendon was holding a cluster of coffee mugs, the smell of real coffee detectable, despite the overwhelming odor of wet carpet.


	3. Outside of a Dog

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [outside of a dog](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/outside+of+a+dog)  
  
---|---  
  
 

Title: Outside of a Dog  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Rating: It's going to be for grownups only. Expect sex.  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.  
Acknowledgments: A large tip of the keyboard to AlXson BechdXl, whose 'verse I might have borrowed from a little.

 

Chapter Three

Pete dragged his grubby T-shirt off and tossed it on the floor, in the general direction of his pack, then splashed cold water from the sink at his face and armpits.

"Sure you don't want to come out with me?" he asked Patrick.

"It's one in the morning," Patrick said. "We've been working for fifteen hours, and my arms are about to drop off. I just want to go to sleep."

Pete shrugged. "Are you going to be okay here?"

Patrick looked around the store, and frowned. The front window was covered in newspaper, stopping anyone from looking in, and the carpet had dried. The paint they'd been slinging at the walls all evening smelled funny, like burning plastic, even though Patrick had demanded they buy the expensive low-VOC paint.

"I'll leave the back door open, and make Andy sleep across the doorway to stop anyone from breaking in," Patrick said. "It shouldn't smell too bad in here."

Pete scooped up his discarded T-shirt and hoodie from the floor and held them out, for Patrick to take, without saying anything.

Joe had gone, earlier in the evening, muttering about having to see someone and promising to be back first thing in the morning. Pete left too, heading for Chemical Love, Cute Guy, and the promise of an over-crowded, under-ventilated venue.

Patrick pulled Pete's hoodie on and crawled into his sleeping bag, while Andy mucked around, brushing his teeth and checking the front door was locked. The music from Chemical Love was a steady doofdoofdoof through the open back door of the store, and moths dive-bombed in, smacking against the fluorescent lights.

Andy switched the lights off and Patrick listened to him rustle into his sleeping bag.

The floor was hard through the sleeping bag, and in the darkness the smell of the paint was magnified, so Patrick pulled the hood of Pete's sweatshirt forward far enough to bury his face into the material.

"Joe told me about the whole sniffing thing he walked in on," Andy said, sounding amused. "He asked me if it was some kind of gay mating ritual or something."

"Oh," Patrick said. "I don't actually think Pete does anything as sophisticated as that. I think he just, um, canvasses people."

"I was watching you and Pete today, and I think I've worked it out. Want to hear my theory?"

"You have an actual theory?" Patrick asked. "I'm impressed. I'd not bothered with a theory myself, figuring that the universe was full of things I wasn't meant to understand, like quantum physics and why people wear tight clothes."

"See, to anyone who doesn't know you both, it might look like the pair of you are in love," Andy said. "That was what I thought for ages. Then I realised that, if you were, then you both were smart enough to have done something about it by now, so that wasn't the answer."

"I was in love with Pete once," Patrick said. "It lasted for a couple of hours, until I remembered what his previous break up had been like. Luckily I didn't have any credit on my phone that day, so I couldn't text him, and I'm not allowed to use the net at work, so there was no harm done. That taught me not to rush into these things."

Andy huffed in the darkness, then said, "Out of curiosity, did you tell him eventually anyway? You know, retrospectively."

"Remember when he broke my little finger?"

Andy was silent for a moment. "Anyway, this theory of mine. I worked it out. We're all primates, right? Just big, hairless apes, with a veneer of civilization on top? Well, you were raised in some weird communal living arrangement, part of a clan, with lots and lots of people around who loved you, pretty much how apes bring up their kids, and how humans should. I figured that just makes you more comfortable with who you are. Less in denial. More honest."

Patrick propped himself up on one elbow, to look at the indistinct shape of Andy in the gloom. "You think I'm honest?"

"About what makes you happy, sure. About yourself, yeah."

"What's Pete's excuse?" Patrick asked. "His family is safely, neurotically normal. Lots of repression and hatred, that sort of thing."

"I think Pete's feral," Andy said. "His socialization didn't take. We're lucky he manages the basics, like wearing clothes and not spitting indoors."

"So he's feral, and I'm well-adjusted, and that's why we act the same way?" Patrick asked. "I wouldn't try and get that one past Pete."

"I'm not planning to. What I was trying to say was that I understood about why smells are so important to you, and that if you're freaking out because of the paint and carpet cleaner, you can sniff me."

Patrick stared at Andy, in the half-light coming though the open door, and wrestled with his conscience.

"Really," Andy said. "I think it would do me good to be more like you, and be comfortable with being close to people. I'm not sure I want to be more like Pete though."

Damn, Patrick's conscience was winning, though his libido was still squirming around, under his conscience's grip. "What if I'm not freaking out? What if I just like the way you smell?"

Patrick could hear Andy smiling, even in the darkness. "That would still be fine."

Okay, Patrick could leave his conscience and libido to sort out the finer details amongst themselves, while he shuffled his sleeping bag across the carpet, so he was right beside Andy.

"Apes, huh?" Patrick asked, pushing the hood of his borrowed sweatshirt out of the way. "Big, hairless apes?"

"Hardwired to hang out in close knit groups," Andy said, unzipping his sleeping bag a little. "With huge olfactory centers in our brains."

Patrick was grinning to himself when he settled his head on Andy's shoulder, because apparently Andy had taken his T-shirt off after switching out the lights.

Patrick's conscience could give up, anytime it wanted to, because it didn't stand a fucking chance now, not if he was going to get to press his face against Andy's skin all night.

"So what do I smell like?" Andy asked, resting his arm around Patrick's shoulders. "Or is that a bad question when I've been dragging a carpet cleaner around all day?"

Patrick breathed, trying to categorize the warmth and skin. "If I was in charge, people would stop showering all the fucking time. You always smell clean, because of how you live. It makes your skin kind of sharp and sweet, like apples or something. And I can smell the tattoo ink, at least I think I can. There's something a little metallic in there, just over the color..."

Andy chuckled, and Patrick stopped rubbing his face across Andy's chest and said, "Um, you know, you can just push me away or whatever."

"It's good. I'm kind of enjoying a glimpse into the Pete-and-Patrick view of the world."

Patrick rested his head back on Andy's shoulder and tried not to yawn. "'Kay. I'll shut up then and go to sleep, unless you want me to simulate the bit where Pete never sleeps and insists on keeping talking all night."

"Can I choose not to go through that?"

"Yeah."

The music went doofdoofdoof, Andy's heart went boomboomboom, and Patrick's conscience and libido called a truce, even if his libido was humping his conscience's leg. Bits of Patrick hurt at random, from scrubbing and painting, and Andy smelled like sweat and man and maybe just a little like eggplant...

***

Someone was shaking Patrick's shoulder, dragging him awake.

"Patrickpatrickpatrick," the voice insisted.

Patrick lifted his head, blinking in the early morning light coming through the open back door of the store.

"Wha?" he asked, managing to focus on Pete, who was crouching over him, apparently naked.

"Can I share your sleeping bag and your Andy?"

Andy grunted, sounding like he would be swearing if he were awake.

"Shh," Patrick said, unzipping his sleeping bag

Pete squirmed in, definitely naked, plastering far too much chilly skin across far too much of Patrick, and Patrick rolled onto his side in an attempt to protect his more vulnerable parts from Pete.

Andy rolled over too, so Patrick burrowed his face down, against Andy's shoulder blades, and went back to sleep.

***

Waking the next time was less unpleasant, with fewer overtones of exhaustion and dying and pain, and the decidedly enjoyable sensation of being sandwiched between two men, so Patrick didn't fight it.

"You're doing it wrong," Joe repeated, reminding Patrick of what had woken him initially, and Patrick managed to get his face peeled off the skin of Andy's back and his eyes open on the second attempt.

"Doing what wrong?" Pete asked, sounding distressingly awake.

Patrick reached behind himself and thumped Pete. "Not that kind of hug, Pete."

Pete stopped groping Patrick.

"Patrick should be naked as well," Joe said. "I bought coffees."

"'M not naked," Andy said indistinctly. "Not completely."

"You look it," Joe said.

"I am," Pete said. "Do you want to see?"

"No. But if Patrick was too, I'd be thinking that the three of you had found unusual things to do with two sleeping bags, seven gallons of white paint and an economy pack of sandpaper. But Patrick is very obviously wearing at least one hoodie, and I'm strangely disappointed."

"Why are you awake?" Patrick asked, separating himself from Pete enough to sit up in the sleeping bag and reach out for the coffee that Joe seemed to be waving around, somewhere beyond Patrick's unaugmented focal length. "And either give me the coffee or my glasses."

"Awake, showered, and caffeinated," Joe said. "It's half past seven, and time we were working."

"Amphetamines?" Pete asked.

"Could be," Joe said, finally handing Patrick a takeaway mug of coffee. "Could be I've been drinking coffee all night."

Patrick prized the lid off the mug and breathed in the coffee, sighing happily. Joe knew the best places to get coffee, like he knew the best places to get most things.

It was going to be a good morning, if everyone would just leave Patrick alone for long enough for higher intellectual functions to kick in and sort his body out. He wasn't going anywhere, not until he'd turned from rampantly-inconveniently-horny into merely moderately-conventionally-horny, which should take one coffee, ten minutes and the usual early morning conversation with his friends.

"Watch your coffee, Patrick," Pete said, wriggling and kicking at the sleeping bag. "Let me out, I gotta piss."

Patrick held his coffee well clear of Pete's elbows and knees, and turned his head, avoiding having to look at Pete's ass too closely, because damn, that was not going to help things calm down.

"Oh fuck, my eyes! My eyes!" Joe said, covering his face with the arm not holding the tray of coffees while Pete jumped around the store naked, trying to find his jeans, then pulled them on while standing up.

"It's safe now," Patrick told Andy, once Pete had done his jeans up and bolted out of the back door, and Andy dug himself out of his sleeping bag and his hair, like some kind of, well, large primate.

"Soy coffee for the vegan," Joe said, holding a cup out for Andy. "I put sugar in it, just because you're going to need the rush. Feel free to pick the sugar out if this was the wrong choice."

Andy grunted, lifting hair out of the way to drink coffee, and Patrick leaned against him.

"What happened?" Joe asked. "Someone needs to update me quickly, before Pete comes back and starts breaking things."

"Nothing happened," Andy said. "I've just decided to be more like Pete and Patrick."

"No!" Joe said. "Please, no!"

"Only the good bits," Andy qualified. "I promise no outbreaks of mass nudity, saliva experiments, seventy-two hour Mia Kirshner move marathons or fruit-as-wearable-art trials."

"Hey!" Patrick said indignantly. "Mia Kirshner is a damned fine actress. _Love and Human Remains_ is one of the finest examples of the low budget Canadian serial killer genre out there."

"She's only made three movies," Joe said. "Looping them endlessly for three days was unbearable."

Patrick sighed. "The thing with the watermelons was a mistake though."

Pete bounded back up the steps and flopped down beside Patrick.

"Are you still whining about the watermelons?" Pete asked. "I promise the pink has faded now, and your hair is back to its usual color. No one can tell it happened."

Patrick drank his coffee, listening to the others bicker, Pete draped across his legs and Andy's arm around his shoulders. He felt deeply happy, more than a little tired, and his libido seemed to have backed his conscience into a corner and be screwing it senseless, and he didn't fucking care.

***

The shelves were shelved, or whatever. The partition walls were partitioned, or walled, and Patrick never wanted to revisit the bit where the four of them had tried to wrestle the walls into place, thank you very much.

Joe and Andy were still working on the counter, drilling and hammering and stuff, in a desperate attempt to build something robust enough to survive a Pete-working day while holding a cash register and a PC.

Patrick had given up helping after Joe had bitten him, and was sitting on his sleeping bag, trying to maintain his righteous anger at the bite wound, while Pete braided his hair and told him lies about what had happened at Chemical Love the night before.

"... and then Gerard, that's the guy we saw taking out the rubbish, well he said to me that he had a fucking unicorn in his office, and that he would take me there to meet it, but his brother, who is even hotter than him, and who is called MikeyfuckingWay, said--"

"You can stop," Joe called out. "And come and hold the cross strut for the counter, Pete. Or you can go home. There are no paths for the future that include you continuing your story."

"Can't Patrick help?" Pete asked.

"No!" Joe and Andy shouted simultaneously.

"Nice," Pete said under his breath as he stood up. "A level of incompetence that crippling is an achievement."

Patrick poked at the bite mark on his hand, hoping it would bleed some more, then patted the braid that Pete had abandoned, making it unravel.

He wanted to go home, or at least to Pete's place. He wanted to sleep in a bed, with a pillow, and soon. Possibly in between Pete and Andy again. He wanted something to eat, though he wasn't particular what it was.

And he really, really wanted to come to work at their bookstore the next day.


	4. Outside of a Dog

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [outside of a dog](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/outside+of+a+dog)  
  
---|---  
  
Title: Outside of a Dog  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Rating: It's going to be for grownups only. Expect sex.  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.  
Acknowledgments: A large tip of the keyboard to AlXson BechdXl, whose 'verse I might have borrowed from a little.

 

Patrick sat on the edge of Pete's mattress, the shower water dripping from his hair mingling with the condensation rising from his mug of coffee, combining to make his glasses opaque. He rubbed at the lenses with his fingertips, in the hope it would help.

"Well?" Pete asked.

"What?"

"How do I look?"

"Like Pete," Patrick said. "I don't fucking know. I don't think Fall Out Boy has a minimum dress code, apart from an expectation that you might cover your genitals during trading hours, and since I doubt we'll be organized enough to actually trade today, that probably doesn't matter either."

"I can wear anything I want?"

"Do I look like I care?"

"You look like you're undead, babe," Pete said. "If you were Joe, I'd be checking for a pulse and putting you in the recovery position."

Patrick considered flipping fingers at Pete, but didn't think he could make his body move enough. Instead, he watched in a daze as Pete dug through his floordrobe, holding up sequined jackets and girl's underwear, before settling on a tiny Little Mermaid T-shirt, hipster jeans and a feather boa.

"Fuck Buns and Noodle," Pete said. "Fuck the straight world. Fuck uniforms and other people's expectations and rules. What are you wearing to work on our first day as business owners?"

Patrick blinked. "Exactly what I have on, which is what I found in my pack this morning, and what I always wear. Jeans, and whatever band t-shirt doesn't have food stuck to it. "

Pete loomed up, close to Patrick, holding articles of clothing in his hands. "Not today, pretty. Today, I dress you."

"I'm not your fucking Barbie Doll," Patrick said. "We've had this argument before."

"If you were my fucking Barbie Doll, we'd still be in bed," Pete said. "Now, put the coffee down and stand up."

"No."

"Yes."

The coffee went everywhere, over Patrick and the blankets, and Pete's knee caught Patrick in the sternum, winding him. Feathers from the boa got stuck in Patrick's nose, and he got his teeth into the bare skin of Pete's midriff, biting into skin, making Pete squeal and flail at Patrick's head. Pete was strong and tough, pinning Patrick's wrists against the mattress, but Patrick kept biting, making Pete howl.

Joe shouted, "Shut the fuck up!" from the doorway, then someone, presumably Joe, dragged Pete off Patrick.

"Not fucking impressed," Joe growled, when Patrick shoved his glasses back on his face and sat back up. "Hate you both."

Pete skulked on the other end of the mattress, hand pressed to his side, and Patrick glowered at him, then shrugged at Joe. "Sorry we woke you up."

"Die, both of you," Joe said. "Just do it quietly."

Joe stomped back to his room, slamming his bedroom door, and Pete said, "Um, now you do need to borrow clothes from me."

Patrick looked down at the coffee soaking into his t-shirt. "Fuck you, find me a fucking t-shirt while I go make another coffee."

###

Pete parked his motorbike in the yard behind the store in a cloud of fumes, and Patrick unwound numb fingers from the grab rail behind the passenger seat.

"I could have walked," Patrick said, when he'd pulled Pete's spare helmet off his head, freeing himself from the cloud of poisonous perfume worn by the last pillion rider, then jammed his trucker hat back on his head.

"Stop whining," Pete said, unzipping his biker jacket and freeing his feather boa. "If you're having a whining day, then I'm listening to my iPod all day."

Patrick thought about pouting, but Pete was already fiddling with the lock on the back door of the store, and with his arms lifted up, Patrick could see that Pete had a significant set of bite marks on his side. Maybe Patrick shouldn't have bitten so hard...

"Sorry," Patrick said, following Pete into the darkened store, trying not to fall over any of the construction supplies they'd left out the night before.

"For what?" Pete said, flicking the lights on, and unbolting the front door of the store.

"Biting you."

Pete glanced back over his shoulder. "What? Hey, no problem. That was hot." The door swung open, and the pair of them looked at the mountain of cartons on the pavement outside. "Oh, shit," Pete said. "Isn't the courier supposed to wait until there's someone here to accept delivery and sign for the stock?"

"Absolutely," Patrick said. "Anyone could have taken this lot. We need to move it inside before it is stolen."

The cartons were heavy, being full of books, and Pete shifted one inside the store, then said, "Have I ever mentioned how physically frail I am?"

"Big, old soccer-playing you?" Patrick said, shoving another carton across the carpet. "Pete who crowdsurfs at gigs? Who has broken every bone in his body? Who doesn't feel pain or fear? Move another carton, loser."

"Damn," Pete said, picking a carton up and hefting it inside. "You noticed."

They found a PC in a crate, under the cartons of books.

"I think we might have established this is a low theft neighborhood," Pete said, as the two of them carried the crate inside. "And that couriers are idiots and don't understand the basics of the delivery process."

"Possibly we're still protected in some way by the aura of the previous occupants," Patrick said. "You know, the filthy tattoo parlor operatives. Maybe no one around here wants to steal from them."

"Hi," a voice said from the doorway, and Patrick looked up and recognized the seriously cute boy from Panic Toys, the first time he'd looked through the window. "I'm Spencer. I'm glad you finally turned up and rescued your stuff, because it was getting really boring, running between my store and your boxes, trying to get organized for the week at Panic, and stop the local thugs from stealing your deliveries. You kids need to turn up on time."

Spencer's eyes finally made it from Pete--Little Mermaid t-shirt, feathers, leather jacket and bruise--to Patrick, and he grinned at Patrick too. Patrick tried for nonchalance, because there wasn't much else he could do when he was wearing Pete's Bay City Rollers t-shirt, and grinned back.

"Thanks, for holding back the forces of evil," Patrick said.

"Nah, the local thieves aren't the forces of evil," Spencer said. "That's the landlords. I should go, get the banking ready for Ryan, or he'll have to slap me. Catch you later."

"Later," Pete said. "And often."

Once the cartons were inside, and the door safely locked, Pete and Patrick sat down on cartons and surveyed the store. "Do we have a plan?" Pete asked. "I think we need a plan, preferably containing coffee and snacks."

"I agree," Patrick said. "Every plan needs snacks. Number one, snacks. Number two, set up PC, and install storefront and stock control system."

Pete nodded.

"Then we go home and sleep. Tomorrow we come back and start entering stock into the system, which will take days. Some time later in the week, we start trading."

"We can't sell books today?" Pete sounded disappointed.

"Are you superhuman?" Patrick asked.

"Well, yes," Pete said. "Of course."

Patrick rolled his eyes. "And do your superpowers extend to stock data entry? Shelving? Pricing?"

"No, my super-abilities are esoteric," Pete said. "And can only be used for the good of humanity."

"Right."

"I can coordinate outfits," Pete said. "For any occasion, for any person."

Patrick nodded seriously, while Pete picked a stray feather out of his mouth. "And?"

"I'm really good at sex."

"A useful talent, I agree," Patrick said. "But how can that only be used for the good of humanity?"

"One person at a time," Pete said. "Or, one small group at a time, anyway. If I could work out how to apply it to a larger group, I would, but what can I say? I'm just one person here."

"Had you thought of taking on hired help? A sidekick? A trained chimp?" Patrick asked. "A Pete-android?"

Pete glared at Patrick, and Patrick said, "I'm just trying to be helpful."

"Right. You could be my sidekick, you know. We could be like a super hero team, taking sex to the world."

"Hey, this is your deranged belief structure, not mine," Patrick said. "Keep me out of this."

"Okay, a Pete-droid then. Is that narcissistic?"

"Only if you do the droid," Patrick said.

"What's the point in having a sex-droid if you don't do the droid?"

"What's the point of pips in passionfruit lube?"

"What?"

"Never mind, you're telling me about your superpowers."

"That's right. Stylish dressing, sex, and you as a best friend. With these superpowers, I can conquer the world."

"But not the bookstore," Patrick said. "We should get a snack machine installed here. Do you think Andy will let us?"

"We don't need a snack machine, because we'd have to put money into a snack machine. What we need is a fridge," Pete said. "Then the food would be free!"

Patrick grinned. "Apart from the bit where we have to buy it initially."

"Buy food? Never! I'll put on my best clothes, go visit my ex who is a chef in that restaurant, and see what I can steal."

"You hate her," Patrick pointed out, trying to keep his voice reasonable. "And she hates you. Remember?"

Pete frowned. "Damn."

"Though, it's possible she'll throw food at you."

"Or knives," Pete said. "Knives would be bad."

Patrick stood up and held out a hand for Pete. "C'mon. I'll uncrate the PC, and you can take the bike in search of snacks that will survive the ride back to the store. Just remember, any fast food attendants you bring back with you will want to share the snacks, so there'll be less to go around."

"I know, I know," Pete said, zipping up his jacket. "Don't bring the burger flippers back too; they never play well with others."

They hugged for a moment, Pete smelling of leather and sweat, and confusingly of bananas, then Pete smacked his lips against Patrick's, and was gone, in a roar of dodgy muffler and poorly tuned engine.

Sending Pete out for anything was a bit like sending Joe out for a bag of dope—the results were erratic, like the time Joe came back with a sleeping bag so full he could barely lift it. Pete roared back into the yard behind the store an hour later, while the install disks for the storefront were still grinding away and Patrick was half-way through the hardcover of the newest ScXlzi he'd dug out of a carton.

He didn't bother looking up from his position on the floor behind the desk, just waved a hand over the counter at Pete.

Pete put a can of soda and a paper-wrapped bundle on the carton beside Patrick and sat on another carton.

"Guess what?" Pete said.

"No," Patrick said. "Your guess whats are always too bizarre, so I'm not even going to try."

"Go on," Pete wheedled.

Patrick sighed, memorizing the page number, then putting the hardcover safely out of Pete's reach. "You don't hate your ex anymore. In fact, you've reconciled, and she's cooked your favorite veggie burgers for us, and that's where you've been for the past hour."

"No," Pete said. "Fuck, no."

Patrick unwrapped the bundle, and sniffed. He'd guessed wrong. "Generic veggie burger. Hmm. I have no idea."

"Joe's on his way, with a little something for the store."

Patrick bit into the burger, and tried to think of what Joe's idea of 'a little something' might be. "A meddle deddecder?"

"Gnoww," Pete said, around lentil patty and fried onion. "Goo iea."

They'd reached the companionable silence stage of the meal, where Patrick burped a lot and Pete picked fried onion out of his feather boa, when Joe's footsteps bounded up the back steps of the store, and Joe half-fell over cartons, and through the partition door.

"'Morning retail sharks," Joe called out, and Pete and Patrick toasted him with their cans of soda. Pete put his soda down on the PC tower, and Patrick removed it immediately, before anyone could tip it over.

"Let's move this baby," Pete said, unwinding his boa.

Patrick followed them out, to the yard, and stared in amazement at the fridge strapped to the back of Joe's pick up. "A fridge! A freaking fridge!"

"That's right," Joe said, untying the rope lashing it in place. "Pete explained your snack predicament this morning, along with something about the limitations of his superpowers and how he wanted a Pete sex-droid, so I picked up a small fridge and brought it over. The sex-droid is going to take longer, and I don't think will count as a business expense."

The fridge looked brand new, with warranty stickers and receipts on the side, when Pete and Joe lifted it up the steps, so Patrick figured he shouldn't ask any more questions, not until Andy was there.

Shoved into the corner of the store room, beside the sink, and plugged in, the fridge hummed into life. "Awesome," Pete said, hugging Joe.

Patrick hugged Joe from the other side, just for completion. "And we're sorry about waking you up."

Pete let go of Joe and jumped onto the fridge, sitting on it. "Excellent! It's exactly the right height for having sex on, too!"

"No!" Patrick shouted, and Joe grabbed Pete and lifted him off the fridge.

"Nonono," Joe said, shaking Pete. "Bad Pete. Same rules as the apartment—nothing involving bodily fluids can happen anywhere near food storage or preparation. Got it?"

"You're no fun anymore," Pete said, his voice stuttering as Joe shook him.

"Put Pete down," Patrick said tiredly. "Before he's sick again."

Joe dropped Pete.

"Where'd you get the fridge?" Patrick asked, opening the door and admiring the shelves. "It's got that great new fridge smell, the one where nothing has rotted in it yet."

"I bought it," Joe said indignantly. "Andy said I had to buy everything that went into the store legitimately, and keep the receipts. He said to pretend that my nightmare about being audited was coming true."

Pete, up off the floor and draped over Patrick's shoulder to admire the fridge too, said, "Dude, you have nightmares about being audited? That's harsh. I have nightmares about STDs and ex-girlfriends and paternity suits and mother-in-laws and everyone being in the same room at the same time."

"What about you?" Joe asked, ask Patrick closed the fridge door, almost trapping Pete's fingers and boa.

"What do I have nightmares about? GeXrge MXrtin dying and not finishing the SXng of Xce and FXre series," Parick said.

Joe and Pete stared at Patrick. "No, for real," Joe said.

"Um, George Lucas releasing another Director's Cut of the original Star Wars," Patrick said. "Joss Whedon giving up and getting a real job."

"You have nightmares about these things?" Pete asked. "Don't you have nightmares about things other people do, like being chased naked by jello monsters through your old high school?"

"That's not normal," Joe said. "Not even by my standards."

Patrick crossed his arms across his chest and glared at Pete and Joe. "I'm not discussing the contents of my subconscious any further, okay. Remember what happened when I told Pete about my Oscar the Grouch dream?"

Pete had the decency to blush, and even Joe wouldn't meet Patrick's gaze.

"So," Pete said. "Who wants me to go and do a food run, get stuff for the fridge?"

"Take my truck," Joe said, holding out his keys. "That way you can buy things that might be squishy."

When Pete had gone, Patrick changed install disks in the PC and opened another carton at random, just to admire the new book smell.

"Are you okay?" Joe asked. "Or are you about to take to Pete with the stapler then hide his body in the dumpster?"

Patrick blinked. "No, I'm fine. Pete is no more or less Pete-like than usual. Why?"

"I haven't had to break you two up for a while," Joe said. "Not like this morning. Figured I should check that all was well in your own little shared psychosis."

Patrick grinned. "I'd forgotten about that. I guess it's a while since one of us actually tried to kill the other one."

"Not since that time you tried to strangle Pete at the truck stop in Indiana," Joe said.

"I didn't just try," Patrick said. "He blacked out, which I think counts as being successful."

Joe sighed. "I keep hoping you kids will grow up or something, but you just keep on being the same."

"We are grown up, or at least as grown up as we're ever going to get," Patrick said. "Someone was foolish enough to let us start a business."

Joe patted the carton he was sitting on and grinned. "Too right. Sold any books today?"

Patrick threw a packing peanut at Joe. "Does it fucking look like I've been able to sell any books?"

The PC beeped, indicating it required attention, and Patrick rolled off the carton and crawled through the mess to go and hit the restart button.

"We have a stock control system," he said two minutes later. "It might be completely empty, and it might be as ugly as Pete's best dress, but it's a freaking stock control system. Hand me a book, Joe, and let's start this data entry process rolling."

 

####

 

Someone pulled Patrick's headphones off, stopping him from singing along to David Bowie, and the only thing that prevented him from snarling was that whoever had done it also held a can of Red Bull out for him to take.

"Thanks," Patrick said, looking up.

Andy grinned down at him. "Hey there. Are you comfortable?"

Patrick had built himself a barricade of cartons, three behind him to lean back on, one each side for arm rests, one in front to take books from, and one to put books into. He had his laptop on his knees, and was adding books to the stock control system remotely, through the store's LAN, while Joe and Pete argued with each other and swore at the main PC. Headphones had become necessary.

"Very," Patrick said, stretching a little and cracking his neck. "Are you off work early?"

"Ran away from the office, figured you'd all need some back up here."

Patrick hit 'save' and balanced his laptop on a carton, then extricated himself from his barricade. "Please," Patrick said. "Please shelve books, and not according to the new alphabet."

Andy said, "What?"

"Joe uses the new alphabet, which is subtly different from the old alphabet."

"Fuck you, and your traditionalist ways," Joe called out from the counter, where he was typing in book titles. "Fuck you all."

"There's more than one alphabet?" Andy said, shaking his head. "I missed out on that one at school."

Patrick hugged Andy. "Oh fuck. There're several alphabets. Pete dented Joe's pick up. Joe and Pete have been picking on me. Can we dissolve the partnership, or is it too late?"

"It's too late," Andy said cheerfully, hugging Patrick back. "We'll just have to stay together for the sake of the children."

"We have not been picking on Patrick," Pete called out. "No more than he deserves."

Andy kissed Patrick's forehead then let go of him. "What can I do? What needs to be done next?"

"Shelve books according to conventional alphabetical order," Pete called out, from where he was kneeling beside a carton, surrounded by packing peanuts. "You know, A before B, the basics like that."

"I don't know," Joe muttered. "I show a little creativity, a little spark, and I get smacked down by my own team. Is this how you treat true genius?"

Andy pulled his work shirt over his head and dumped it on a carton. "I'm an accountant. I _like_ things being in the correct order. Show me the books, and I'll shelve the damned things."

# #

In Pete's room that night, when Patrick had brushed his teeth and removed the last of the packing peanuts from his hair, Pete was standing in front of the mirror propped against the bedroom wall, wearing only a towel, still wet from the shower.

Patrick dropped his borrowed Bay City Rollers T-shirt onto Pete's dirty clothes pile and clambered into Pete's bed, wearing just boxers.

"Are you being randomly narcissistic again, like with the Pete-droid?" Patrick asked sleepily, staking an early claim on as much of the blankets and sheet as he could. "Or is there an actual purpose to the mirror-gazing this time, like, um, rib-counting, or trying to work out which of your nipples is longer?"

"Just admiring your dentition," Pete said distractedly, turning around to show Patrick the livid red and purple bite marks on his side. "Nice work. Very nice. I'd like to get the canine impressions tattooed in, but I've spent all my cash on buying a bookstore."

Pete dropped the towel and clambered onto the bed, crouching beside Patrick. Patrick pushed his glasses up his nose and peered at the bruise. "It's a great set of bruises," Patrick agreed, running his fingertips over the marks. "Almost as good as when you fell off your mom's bookshelf onto her Christmas tree that time."

Pete reached up and turned the light off, and Patrick took his glasses off in the dark and slid them under the pillow while Pete burrowed under the bedding.

"Do you remember that Christmas?" Pete said. "That was great fun. You stayed over, and made yourself sick on popcorn and waffles…"

Patrick tuned Pete out, eyes shut and breathing slowing, and Pete droned on, emptying his subconscious out into Patrick's ear, one disconnected sentence after another. Patrick could shut out the sound of Pete's late night babble, could sleep through his confessions of personal failure like sleeping with a white noise generator or a TV on. It surprised Patrick, sometimes, what he did remember from Pete's late night stream-of-subconciousness venting, and then he found himself reaching for the mental brain bleach…

Pete's arm slid closer around Patrick's waist, and Pete's voice settled somewhere near Patrick's shoulder, rattling on about grade school and arithmetic. Pete's other hand grabbed Patrick's ass, and Patrick sleepily said, "Not that kind of hug, Pete," then Patrick fell asleep.


	5. Outside of a Dog

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |    
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [outside of a dog](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/outside+of+a+dog)  
  
---|---  
  
Title: Outside of a Dog  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)**chaosmanor**  
Rating: It's going to be for grownups only. Expect sex.  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.  
Acknowledgments: A large tip of the keyboard to AlXson BechdXl, whose 'verse I might have borrowed from a little.

 

Chapter Five

"If you ask me how you look, I will stab you with a pricing gun," Patrick said, without looking up from the pile of books on the counter. "You probably look exactly the same as you did half an hour ago, unless you have found yet another way to modify the work T-shirt using only stationery supplies and pizza."

Pete was silent for a moment, behind Patrick, then he said, "I still can't believe Andy and Joe want us to wear a work uniform, and that you voted along with them."

"I like work uniforms," Patrick said. "I don't have to work out what to put on when I wake up. The fewer decisions I have to deal with before ten o'clock, the better."

"So you don't agree with Andy and Joe that I can't be trusted to dress myself in the morning?"

Patrick turned around to look at Pete, and sighed. Pete had slashed his new Fall Out Boy T-shirt from neck to hem, and was holding the edges of his T-shirt together with an elaborate arrangement of paperclips and staples. "No, I don't agree with Joe and Andy. I think that _I_ can't be trusted to dress myself in the mornings. You're fine, you're the one with the superpowers. I'm a mere mortal who struggles with the basics of personal hygiene."

Pete grinned at Patrick. "Want some of the pizza that's for the grand opening?"

"No, because Andy has counted every slice, and will know."

Pete's face fell. "Uh oh."

Patrick handed Pete the pricing gun. "Finish the stock, and I'll vacuum the last of packing peanuts up."

Pete hugged Patrick, sticking him randomly with paperclips and staples. "I love you, you crazy person."

"Love you too, now price the fucking books and put them on the shelf."

Pete circumvented Andy's rage at pizza being missing by greeting Andy and Joe with a pizza platter, when they returned with tubs of ice and soda cans.

"You get the first slices," Pete insisted. "Because you've done so much running around."

"Pizza is for guests," Andy said, but Joe reached for a slab, saying, "Oh, great, no pineapple on this one."

Patrick and Andy dragged the tubs of soda in, from the pickup, and Andy said, "Pete's T-shirt?"

"Don't. Ask," Patrick said. "You really didn't think Pete was going to wear a uniform, did you?"

Andy grunted, but didn't bother replying.

"Have some pizza," Pete said, waving a piece at Patrick, adding in a whisper, "Quick, eat some, before Andy does any counting."

Patrick took a piece of pizza, and grabbed a can of heavily caffeinated and sweetened soda, and surveyed the store. They had a float, electronic banking facilities had been installed that day, and they had about two thirds of their stock in place. The PC and stock control system worked, as long as no one wanted them to search to see if they had something in stock—the preferred search method involved walking over to a shelf and looking, rather than relying on anything technological. The store room door didn't close, or of it did, it didn't open again. They had pizza, and soda.

They were ready for their grand opening--invite everyone they know--post on their blogs--hope the fuck someone turns up--opening party.

Pete propped open the store's front door, then helped himself to another piece of pizza.

Ten minutes later Patrick realized that of course, if Pete posted something to all four of his blogs, and that something involved free pizza, people would turn up. Some of those people would bring guitars, amps and speakers. Some of them would bring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Some of them would bring model airplanes. Some of them would bring film documentary crews. Some of them would bring undercover FBI agents.

Patrick mouthed, "That's seven ninety-nine," to his mom, over the background noise, and put the copy of SlXw RXver, by NXcola GrXffith, in a paper bag.

His mom tucked the book under her arm and pocketed her change. "Nice turnout," she said, quite capable of making herself heard over both The Stones on Patrick's headphones and any party that Pete could throw. "You wasted your time cleaning your carpet on the weekend."

Patrick shrugged. He'd reached that conclusion himself, really quickly. They'd have to clean the carpet again before trying to open the store the next morning. Or rather, Pete would have to clean the carpet again before the store opened the next morning.

The person standing behind Patrick's mom in the queue nudged her, making her glare at them, then step aside.

Patrick grinned at Spencer, and took the copy of The DXll's HXuse that Spencer held out, to scan the bar code. "Great party," Spencer shouted. "Love the splash pool on the sidewalk."

The noise outside was slightly less, though Patrick could foresee a visit from a squad car sometime in the near future, just based on the volume levels and the congestion in the car park. It did mean that he when he yelled "What were you thinking?" at Pete, Pete actually heard him.

"You know Gabe," Pete said. "You've met him before. It's his splash pool."

Patrick looked at Gabe, and the mud, and willed himself to relax. "Okay. But Gabe can't track the mud into the store, or touch the stock."

Pete nodded. "Sure. I do own one in four of the books, remember."

"It's the other three in four books I'm worrying about," Patrick said.

Spencer tugged on Patrick's arm, leading him through the crowd, away from Pete, Gabe and the splash pool, and Patrick followed him.

Outside the nail salon, now closed up for the night, Spencer said, "So, about Pete…"

Patrick shrugged. "What about Pete?"

"Is he always, um, so high velocity?"

"Yes. Why?"

The nail salon owners had thoughtfully left their lights on, and the flashing display advertising something vile that people might want to do to their toenails was either malfunctioning or Spencer had blushed bright red, right to his ears.

"Um, we were all just wondering. All of us at Panic Toys."

"He'd sleep with all of you, separately or collectively," Patrick said. "So don't go wasting any emotional energy on that one. Just, you know, drop the shop an email or something. Put something obvious in the header, to spare the rest of us from having to read it."

Spencer went even redder, which Patrick hadn't thought possible.

"Um, no, that wasn't for me. One of the others thinks he's hot."

Patrick waited, while Spencer had some kind of meltdown.

"Do you always arrange things like that for Pete?" Spencer asked eventually.

"Not in general," Patrick said. "He doesn't need any assistance. I just figured I'd help you out. My own embarrassment threshold is ridiculously high, since I used to sell sex toys to lesbians."

Spencer made a choking noise. "Really? So you're kind of like Pete too?"

Patrick shook his head. "I'm one of those silent, weird guys who never ask anyone out because they can't quite believe anyone would like them."

"Me too," Spencer said.

Patrick was kind of surprised at that, given the general hotness of Spencer, but he'd also spent enough time around Pete to recognize when he was being hit on, even when it was in a mutual-shy-weird-guy way.

The lights from the nail salon window haloed Spencer's hair, when Patrick backed him against the glass. Spencer grabbed Patrick's brand new Fall Out Boy T-shirt, and they collided, mouths sliding together, while someone laid rubber down in the car park, filling the air with the smell of burning tire.

The party roared, right beside them, and Patrick kissed Spencer, one hand up the back of Spencer's shirt, hoping he was getting some kind of message through to Spencer involving the two of them and comparative privacy, because he reckoned he had about four minutes at the most before one of his fellow bookstore owners decided that they needed to find him.

He managed three minutes of what was, in Patrick's opinion, damned hot making out, before Joe said, "Patrick? Can you stop doing that for a moment?"

Spencer groaned, and Patrick turned his head to look at Joe. "Is it a crisis? A really big crisis?"

"Feels it to me," Spencer whispered, lips against Patrick's ear, which made Patrick laugh, and Joe frown.

"Um, yes," Joe said. "I've lost Pete and Andy, and something is wrong with the cash register, and your mom can't work out how to fix it, and she said to find you."

Spencer pulled his hands out of the back pocket of Patrick's jeans and from under Patrick's T-shirt. "I'm admitting defeat," Spencer said. "Under the circumstances. Go and fix your register. You know where to find me."

Patrick let go of Spencer reluctantly, and followed Joe back through the crowd. "Did you give my mom hash brownies?" he asked Joe, as they worked their way through people dancing.

"Maybe?" Joe said. "Would she have taken a brownie?"

Patrick sighed. "Hello there, she's a fucking hippy, of course she would have. No wonder she couldn't work the register."

Patrick's mom was perched on a stool, leaning across the counter, looking trashed. "You can't read RXbert JXrdan, young man," she said, to someone Patrick recognized as one of Pete's exes. "Your life is too short to be reading such fascist rubbish. You should read something that broadens your intellectual horizons. Besides, the loser is dead."

Patrick patted her shoulder. "Why don't you go find some more pizza or another brownie? I'll take over here."

"RXbert JXrdan is dead?" Pete's ex said, looking shattered. "What?"

"Pizza? There's more pizza?" Patrick's mom said.

Patrick's mom wandered off, through the crowd, and Patrick plastered a sympathetic look on his face and took her place. "RXbert JXrdan died recently, but he had time to make arrangements for the final WhXel of Time book, and it's being written by BrXndon SXnderson, exactly how JXrdan wanted it to be."

"But? It won't be the same…"

Patrick nodded. "I know. I think, for me, I'm going to choose not to read the SXnderson book, you know, and leave the series incomplete."

Pete's ex's face creased, and Patrick wondered how Pete had put up with the guy. 'Briefly' was probably the answer.

"But then I won't know how the series ends."

"It's a quandary," Patrick said. "And when the book comes out, I'll be happy to engage in a debate with you, but right now, I need to serve the person standing behind you and holding BXmbos of the DXath SXn."

The next customer was the guy who worked at Chemical Love, who Patrick had a waving-on-the-way-to-the-dumpster acquaintance with.

"Hey," the guy said. "I'm Gerard. It's good to meet you at last."

"Patrick. Good choice of book. It's hilarious, especially if you've ever been to an SF con."

"Comic cons for me, but they can't be that different," Gerard said. "Great launch party."

"Thanks," Patrick said.

The cash register and stock control system worked just fine, much to Patrick's annoyance. Trashed people should never be left in charge of anything, obviously, which raised the question of where the fuck Andy had gone.

Gerard took his book and merged back into the crowd, and Patrick settled into a steady stream of customers buying bad vampire romances and vapid fantasy trilogies.

Pete's absence was no real mystery, and if Patrick could get away from the register long enough, he was sure a brief search of the cars in the car park would locate Pete. Patrick couldn't begrudge Pete that, not when Patrick had got to grind up against Spencer himself. And he could see Joe, across the store and through the crowd, pulling books off the shelves for people, though Patrick had doubts about the quality of advice Joe might be offering.

Patrick had just sold yet another copy of that fucking twinkling vampire book when a roar of approval went through the crowd, and Andy pushed through the mass of bodies, a stack of pizza boxes held over his head.

"More pizza!" Andy called out, as someone killed the music. "And Pete's got the vegetarian and vegan pizzas!"

Pete appeared a moment later, carrying an even larger pile of pizza boxes. He put them down on one of the folding tables they'd borrowed for the evening, then grabbed a box and dropped it on the counter in front of Patrick. "Miss me?" he said to Patrick.

"Um, yes," Patrick said.

"Sorry I didn't tell you where I was going, but I didn't want to cock block you," Pete said. "Nice hickey."

"Your courtesy is appreciated," Patrick said. "Such politeness oils the wheels of friendship, and all that."

Andy slung his arm around Pete's shoulders, and opened the pizza box on the counter. "Excellent, this is one of the vegan ones. Sold any books while we were gone, or were you too busy?"

"I've sold many books, because unfortunately Joe got my mom trashed and she couldn't work the register, so I had to leave Spencer and come back here and work," Patrick said. "While I like the idea of us selling books, that's the closest I've come to any action for some months, and it fucking hurts."

Pete cleared his throat purposefully.

"The closest to any action, apart from stopping Pete from groping me all the fucking time," Patrick clarified. "And it still fucking hurts."

"Sorry," Pete said, not sounding at all apologetic.

Patrick took a piece of vegan pizza, and surveyed the store. It looked like the party might be winding down. The band had stopped playing, and gone off to their regular gig. Gabe and his splash pool had gone, leaving only the mud behind. The documentary crew had stopped filming, and had left, taking the gay men in high heels and nun's habits with them. There was probably only fifty people left, stuffing themselves with pizza and milling around the store and sidewalk. Spencer and the other Panic boys had disappeared, unfortunately, which made Patrick decidedly frustrated.

"More?" Pete said, holding the pizza box out to Patrick. "Build your strength up, ready for the clean up?"

"I'm not cleaning up," Patrick said. "Right, Andy?"

"That's right," Andy said, leaning across Pete to claim another slice. "And neither am I. We're going to cash up, and then roll out the sleeping bags that are in the store room and watch you deal with the mess from the splendid comfort of nylon and polyester wadded cocoons."

"Me?" Pete squeaked. "Why me?"

"Gabe and the splash pool of mud," Patrick said. "Whose friend is Gabe?"

"Then there's William and the gallon tub of frosting," Andy said.

"Hey! William is everyone's friend," Pete said.

"Is that frosting in your hair?" Andy said, poking at the back of Pete's head. "And in your ear?" Andy leaned closer. "Yeah, it's in your ear."

"Billy is still everyone's friend."

Patrick leaned across the counter, plastering pizza across the front of his T-shirt accidentally as he grabbed Pete's chin and tipped Pete's face up to examine it briefly. "Frosting up your nose? Were you inhaling again? You know how badly that ends."

Joe shuffled over, a piece of pizza in each hand. "Has Pete been inhaling?" Joe asked, with the distant look in his eyes that meant he wouldn't be driving anywhere that night, or possibly for some days.

"Frosting, not anything else," Andy said.

Joe nodded. "Still, that's not like you, Pete."

"Frosting," Pete said, taking one of Joe's pieces of pizza out of his unresisting hand. "You know, the yummy stuff that goes on top of cakes. Or Williams. Let me walk you and your pizza outside for a bit, I think you might need some air."

Pete came back, having propped Joe against the store window beside one of the hot guys from Chemical Love, and Patrick sold a XXXenXphile graphic novel to a puzzled member of the general public who had wandered into the store at random.

"Have some pizza," Pete urged the Member of the General Public. "It's free."

Patrick opened the cash register drawer to check on the dire state of the change situation, and Andy said, "We're all secure with our sexual orientations, aren't we? Amongst the four of us?"

"Sure," Patrick said, poking at the last of the quarters, then closing the drawer. "I'm gay. Haven't gone near girls since fifth grade, and that horrible thing with Dianna Whatever Her Name Was."

"And I'm mostly gay," Andy said. "At an intellectual level, I like the idea of women, but it gets lost in the execution somehow. And Pete?"

Pete shrugged. "People are cool."

The three of them looked past the new book display and through the store window, to where Joe was kissing the hot guy from Chemical Love.

Andy said, "And Joe is straight. Really, really straight."

"That's Mikey. Mikey is not female," Pete said. "And I speak with some authority here."

"Should we intervene?" Andy asked, as they watched Mikey grabbing Joe's ass. "Or do you think Joe is about to discover his, um, error for himself?"

Patrick tipped his head to one side, to see more clearly around the almost empty rack of RXymond FXist new releases. "You'd think, given how close they're, um, standing, Joe would have noticed by now. Or do you think Joe knows, and doesn't care? Should we ask someone who's had some of the brownies, find out how strong the hash was?"

They looked around the store hopefully, and Pete waved William over. William shuffled over to them, sucking his fingers, presumably still enjoying the last of his gallon of frosting.

"Not touching books," William said, speaking slowly, like someone that was having trouble finding words, even simple ones. "Remembered."

He pushed his fingers helpfully into Andy's mouth, and Andy pulled them out again, and said, "Dude, is that frosting vegan?"

William shrugged.

"How many brownies did you have?" Pete asked William.

William's forehead creased. "Did I eat brownies? Did you give me brownies?"

"Joe was the brownie fairy tonight," Pete said.

"Joe isn't a fairy, honey," William said. "Everyone knows that."

Patrick glanced back through the store window. "I think that just for one special night, Joe is a fairy."

"I had two brownies," William said. "And one of Joe's joints, out in the car park. And a lot of frosting. And Gabe had a bottle of tequila, and he and Joe were doing flaming brownies off the hood of Gabe's car, and Gabe's hair caught fire, but I didn't do any of those because tequila makes me sick."

Patrick, Pete and Andy all turned at that same time, to look at the empty space on the back wall where their brand new fire extinguisher was supposed to be hanging.

"We can bill Gabe for that," Andy said. "That extinguisher should last longer than three days, even with Pete working here."

"I think we can conclude the brownies are potent, and Joe is wasted, but possibly still potent too," Pete said. "Might be time to run a little intervention, team, and save Joe's precious gay virginity, before Mikey bends him over the trunk of a car or something."

Patrick slapped William's back on the way past, and said, "Guard the cash register for us."

William giggled and clambered unsteadily onto the stool, draping himself across the register, wrapping his arms around the display screen protectively. They wouldn't make any sales with Billy there, but no one would steal anything either.

At the doorway, Andy grabbed Pete's arm, and said, "Plan. You talk to Mikey, make him a counteroffer or whatever. Patrick and I will deal with Joe."

Pete gurgled happily. "Plan."

A moment later, Mikey's cell phone rang, and he disengaged his mouth from Joe's long enough to mumble, "Oops," and reach into his jeans and find his phone. "Yeah," Mikey said into his phone.

"It's Pete," Pete said, over the phone, and directly in front of him. "I need ten seconds of your time."

Mikey glared at Pete, and closed his phone. "Fuck off."

Patrick and Andy got hold of Joe, and peeled him out of Mike's arms. "Ten seconds," Patrick said, while Joe bleated and flailed his arms unhappily.

"No," Joe said. "No, guys, stop."

Patrick and Andy leaned Joe against the same damned nail salon window sign that Patrick had kissed Spencer against, and Andy gripped Joe's chin in his hand, and said, "Focus, Joe. Straighten up for a moment."

"That's ironic," Patrick muttered, and Andy kicked him.

"Wha?" Joe said.

"You're. Making. Out. With. A. Guy. Do you know this?" Andy said clearly. "Do you understand this?"

Joe stared at Andy, then at Patrick. "Noooo. Girls. Hot girl. Gonna get laid."

Andy shook his head. "Hot girl has a penis."

Joe's mouth fell open in disbelief, and Patrick leaned against the window beside Joe and groaned. There was a reason he didn't take drugs, and it had nothing to do with any high moral stance, or keeping his body pure. It was because drugs made people so stupid they didn't notice what gender the person they were making out with was. That might not matter to someone like Pete, but Patrick cared about these things.

Of course, Pete didn't do drugs because he reckoned the inside of his head was already so fucked up that he didn't want to make it any worse, but that was a different matter entirely.

"Let's go put you to bed," Andy said, and Patrick grabbed Joe's other arm, steadying him.

"Girl?" Joe asked.

"Pete will make it up to her," Patrick said. "She'll be fine."

##

The cleanup was superficial, consisting of dropping all the pizza scraps and boxes in the dumpster. The soda cans went into a tub for recycling, and the last of the ice went out into the yard at the back of the store. Patrick looked at the mud drying on the sidewalk and sighed. The fire extinguisher wasn't going to do the job; it was compressed CO2. Maybe when the mud was dry, it would be easier to deal with.

Pete had disappeared, of course, off with Mikey, and Patrick couldn't complain about that. He could save the worst of the cleaning for him, though. The carpet would be waiting for Pete, when he chose to reappear.

Andy was in the store room, cashing up, so Patrick dug his toothbrush out of his pack as quietly as possible and brushed his teeth at the tiny sink in the store room.

"Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three," Andy muttered, counting coins, while Patrick brushed and spat.

Patrick patted Andy on the back and put his toothbrush away, then tossed his T-shirt on his pack. Joe was out cold, safely on his side in a sleeping bag, but Patrick checked on him anyway, just in case.

"Poor Joe," Andy said, behind Patrick.

Patrick unrolled his own sleeping bag, beside the rack of graphic novels, so that the GaXman titles loomed over him.

"Poor Joe," Patrick agreed. "You all done?"

Andy tossed a sleeping bag beside Patrick, on a relatively clean patch of carpet. "Done enough that it almost balances. I'll fill out the banking slip tomorrow, before I leave for work."

Patrick closed his eyes and listened to Andy brush his teeth, then move around the store, checking the locks and turning the lights off. In the darkness, while Andy rustled into his sleeping bag, Patrick took his glasses off and balanced them inside his cap, right where he could find them again in the morning.

"You coming over?" Andy asked, and Patrick grinned to himself.

"Just waiting for the invitation."

Andy's arms wrapped around Patrick's back, and Patrick settled his head on Andy's shoulder, making happy noises to himself when Andy stroked a hand across his shoulder.

"Are you horribly disappointed at missing out with Spencer?" Andy asked, and Patrick blinked a little in the gloom at the question. "Have you got a big thing for him?"

"Hmm," Patrick said. "Not a big thing, he's just hot, and it's been too long since anyone's shown any interest in me. Well, anyone who's not deranged and already my best friend, and I'm just not going there with Pete."

"Completely understandable," Andy said. "I wouldn't want to go there with Pete either."

Andy's fingers worked into the top of Patrick's neck, drawing small circles on his skin, and Patrick thought he might be melting, it felt so good.

"You asleep?" Andy asked, a little while later, and Patrick grunted, nodding against Andy.

Patrick was distantly aware through his Pete-talking-all-night-filter of Andy pulling the sleeping bag up over his shoulders and muttering, "Would you want to go there with me?"

One percent of Patrick was awake enough to hear, and that one percent squawked at the ninety-nine percent of him that was out cold, unsuccessfully.


	6. Outside of a Dog

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [outside of a dog](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/outside+of+a+dog)  
  
---|---  
  
Title: Outside of a Dog  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Rating: It's going to be for grownups only. Expect sex.  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.  
Acknowledgments: A large tip of the keyboard to AlXson BechdXl, whose 'verse I might have borrowed from a little.

This chapter is for [carnilia](http://carnilia.livejournal.com/), because she made me a piece of art that has nothing to do with this story, but that made me smile a lot.

Also, the customer story in this chapter is **true**, only the customer asked for a blue book with an elf on it.

 

Chapter Six

Ryan was behind the counter at Panic Toys when Patrick pushed the door open, and he lifted his hand in what might count as a wave.

"Hey, Patrick. Have you cleaned up from last night yet?"

"Hi Ryan," Patrick said. "Pete is scraping the party off the sidewalk and carpet at the moment, so I figured I'd stay out of his way."

Ryan rolled his eyes. "What was it with that guy and the mud?"

"I don't know," Patrick said. "I really don't know." Patrick paused at the Top Gear Poseable Crash Test Dummy display, and picked up the Jeremy Clarkson doll. "You here by yourself today?"

"For the morning. Those other losers I work with were too out of it to come to work this morning."

Ryan glared at Patrick, and Patrick bent Jeremy Clarkson's left arm at an impossible angle.

"Joe is still asleep, in our store room," Patrick said. "We're hoping he wakes up by close of trade today."

"Spencer will be in this afternoon, if you're looking for him," Ryan said.

"And Pete will be at our store all day," Patrick said, positioning Jeremy Clarkson suggestively against James May. "If any of you were looking for him."

Ryan smiled in a way that showed none of his teeth, and Patrick stomped out of the Panic store, back to his own.

The sidewalk looked better, at least, where Pete had brushed the worst of the dried mud off, but Patrick had doubts about Pete's plan to run the carpet cleaner over it after doing the carpet. Life was one long adventure…

Inside the store, the shelves were looking a little empty, but the store was far tidier, with the folding tables stacked out of sight, along with Joe. Patrick gave Pete a hand to move the portable display units, then helped himself to left over cold pizza while Pete went to pick up a carpet cleaner.

While Pete was cleaning the carpet, Patrick took refuge from the noise on the sidewalk. He leaned against the store window, reminiscing about making out with Spencer, and trying to work out why he had the feeling he'd forgotten something terribly important about the night before

Gerard ambled around the corner, while Patrick was considering the state of the universe. Gerard always looked wrong in the daylight, like he was vampire who didn't know the rules or something.

"Hey there," Gerard said. "You got some time?"

Patrick looked around and nodded. "Sure. What's up?"

Gerard was radiating discomfort, like he'd left the clothes hangers in his clothes when he'd dressed. "Can we go somewhere else?"

Uh oh, Patrick could sense impending disaster, even without a GM rolling dice for him. "Sure, hang on."

He went back into the store and waved his hands at Pete, who looked up from dragging the carpet cleaner between shelves. "Ten minutes," Patrick shouted, holding up all his fingers, and Pete gave him the thumbs up back.

Chemical Love looked weird with the lights on, just like Gerard, the carpet dingy, the walls shabby, and Patrick followed Gerard through the empty club, the acoustic tiles swallowing the sound of their footsteps.

"Sorry about being a drama llama," Gerard said, opening a door to a shabby office and pointing at plastic chair, then collapsing into an equally plastic office chair.

"You don't have a unicorn?" Patrick blurted out.

"What?" Gerard said.

"Pete said you had a unicorn in your office."

Gerard stared at Patrick, then started laughing. "Damn Mikey, and his damn fucking stories. No unicorn, for obvious reasons. I wanted to talk to you about Pete."

"No," Patrick said. "You can't talk to me about Pete. You have to talk to Pete about Pete. I can't be held responsible for anything Pete says or does. I have no control over Pete. Pete is just Pete, and everyone has to get used to him."

Gerard shook his head. "Calm down, though I do understand, because people always want to talk to me about Frank like that. I just wanted to say that Mikey is my little brother, and I know he acts like he's ultra cool and everything, but he's got it pretty bad for Pete. So I guess I'm just being all protective and checking Pete out."

Patrick blinked. "Okay. What sort of checking out?"

"Obviously Pete is bug fuck crazy, which I don't give a shit about, because anyone who knows anything about the dynamics of us here at Chemical Love knows that we thrive on that. I'm more worried about the internal politics of your group."

Gerard was watching Patrick's face closely, his eyes steady, and Patrick had a flash of insight. "You're asking if Mikey is going to be intruding on anyone else's territory? Not in-house. Apart from that, I can't say, because Pete might have started dating an entire football team in the time I've been gone from the store."

Gerard smiled, and Patrick decided he liked Gerard. "Good. I needed to check that Pete wasn't actually your Vermont civil partner, and the two of you never bother telling people."

Patrick boggled a little at the idea. "Um, no."

Gerard shrugged. "I heard about Mikey's mistake with Joe last night. I hope Joe's okay."

"He's still asleep, but I'm anticipating his personal crisis of identity with some amusement," Patrick said. "But I'm malicious that way."

"Ah, the shared entertainments of a fellow abstainer," Gerard said. "Nothing like watching your friends get hammered and make total asses of themselves, and being the only person who remembers, is there?"

Patrick grinned. "I should get back, before bad things happen at the store."

Gerard walked beside Patrick, to the club door. "It was good talking to you," Gerard said. "And I'm sorry if you were disappointed about the unicorn."

"Deeply disappointed," Patrick said. "My heart's broken. I may never recover."

Gerard laughed, and closed the club door behind Patrick.

Patrick laughed too, to himself, as he walked back to the bookstore. So, Mikey had it bad for Pete, and had chosen to show it by picking up straight Joe? Life didn't get much more amusing than that.

Ryan was in the store, perched on the counter, watching Pete drag the carpet cleaner around, to Patrick's continued hilarity. That Pete had decided carpet cleaning was hot work and taken off his T-shirt was elevating the situation to something of a farce, in Patrick's opinion.

"Hi Ryan," Patrick shouted over the roar of the carpet cleaner, and Ryan scowled at Patrick.

"Bye, Ryan," Patrick shouted, because if Ryan was at Fall Out Boy, then there was a chance that Spencer was at Panic Toys, and alone.

Ryan might have scowled at that, but Patrick didn't bother looking.

Pete could either work out where Patrick had gone, or call him, when the carpet-cleaning-and-tattoo-exhibition had finished.

Good friends didn't cock block, and that worked both ways.

Spencer was behind the counter at Panic Toys, and he grinned at Patrick briefly over the head of a customer who was earnestly bent over the counter, peering at a Star Wars model.

"But is it canon-compliant?" the customer asked.

"It's canon-compliant up to the release of the sixth movie, the first time around," Spencer said. "Any shit that was introduced in the extended version isn't canon anyway, in my opinion."

Patrick nodded enthusiastically, signaling his agreement. He wasn't going to part with his VHS tapes of the original trilogy until someone released a version of the movies he was happy with, even if his favorite scenes were distorted from repeated freeze-framing.

Classic was classic.

The customer bought the X-wing model and left, so Patrick leaned across the counter and grinned at Spencer. "Ryan said you had trouble waking up this morning."

"Joe's brownies were a little on the poisonous side," Spencer said. "I'm sorry if I was hideously inappropriate last night."

"Don't apologize," Patrick said. "Please don't. I don't think you were at all inappropriate. On the scale of inappropriateness, you were at the zero end, being wonderful. Joe was up the other end, and needed rescuing before something startlingly unexpected happened to him."

Spencer lifted both eyebrows, managing to look pleased and amused, and Patrick leaned a little closer.

"Ryan's occupied at the bookstore," Patrick said. "Pete has a lot of tattoos that need to be admired. I could try and prove to you that you weren't inappropriate last night..."

"By being inappropriate now?" Spencer asked.

Patrick grinned. "That's the idea."

Patrick didn't know if Spencer licked his bottom lip deliberately or subconsciously, but it didn't really matter, not if Spencer was going to meet him halfway, mouth already opening.

This kiss was slow and indecent, and Patrick could hear the clatter of stuff behind the counter as Spencer hitched himself higher, getting better access. Patrick held onto Spencer's arm, steadying him, and Spencer made gratifying noises against Patrick's mouth.

"Mommy," a little voice said. "Why are those men kissing?"

Patrick let go of Spencer reluctantly and turned to smile at a surprised-looking Hockey Mom and her daughter. Damn, Pete was never around to MILF when he was needed.

"Because, little girl," Patrick said. "We're not allowed to get married, so all that's left for us is kissing in toy stores in front of the children."

Spencer coughed, and the Hockey Mom glared. "Do you have the GenXration One BXrnacle Boy My LXttle PXny, in blue, with the ClXdesdale fluff on the feet?"

Spencer served the Hockey Mom—and Patrick was frankly appalled at how much the My LXttle PXny cost, and he knew how much it was possible to spend on a replica light saber with realistic sound effects—then closed and locked the door behind the mom and kid.

"I can't believe you said that," Spencer said, starting to laugh as he hung the 'back in ten minutes' sign on the door. "Are you always so antagonistic?"

"Yes," Patrick said. "But only to the straight world."

Spencer took Patrick's hand and pulled him behind the counter, so they were screened by a rack of miniature cars that presumably made someone very excited. Patrick didn't give a damn about miniature cars, not right then, but he was moving right past interested, to fascinated, by Spencer.

"Hold onto the counter," Patrick said, pushing Spencer back against the edge of it, dislodging some of the miniature cars.

"Oh, fuck," Spencer said, against Patrick's neck, then Patrick got the damned button at the top of Spencer's fly undone.

"The sign says ten minutes," Patrick whispered. "I think fucking might be a little optimistic, under the circumstances."

The clutter on the floor behind the counter was uncomfortable under Patrick's knees, a random collection of cardboard packaging, paper and plastic bags, discarded receipts and crumpled disposable coffee cups, , but Patrick didn't fucking care. He pushed his hat to one side and rubbed his face across the front of Spencer's jeans, breathing in the scent of Spencer, moaning to himself at how fucking hot Spencer smelled.

Spencer moaned too, grabbing at Patrick's shoulders and bending forward, and Patrick had to remind himself they only had ten minutes.

Spencer, up close and personal, with his jeans around his thighs, and his boxers low enough that his cock hung heavy over the elastic, was like every late night fantasy of the past few months come true for Patrick. His cock slid into Patrick's mouth sweetly, slipping across Patrick's tongue, hard and urgent, and Patrick wanted to fucking climb all over Spencer, sucking his skin, just to taste him.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Spencer gasped, and he wasn't fucking kidding.

Patrick shoved a hand down, yanking his own fly undone, dragging his cock out desperately, clamping his fingers around himself, trying to hang on even though he was jumping out of his skin.

The noises Spencer made, all deep and desperate, went right through Patrick, and fuck yeah, Patrick wanted as much of Spencer's cock in his mouth as he could manage, so that Spencer's fingernails dug into the back of Patrick's shoulders hard enough to hurt, and Patrick couldn't breathe.

Spencer seemed to be after the same thing, jerking forward, almost choking Patrick, making Patrick swallow hard and keep swallowing, until Spencer slumped down, on top of Patrick, sending both of them sprawling across empty cartons and the rubbish bin.

"Owwww," Patrick bitched, pushing the bin out from under his shoulder, then Spencer planted a hand on Patrick's sternum, pushing Patrick down harder and getting some leverage up. "Ow, fucking watch it."

"Oh, stop whining," Spencer said, then he wrapped his mouth around Patrick's cock, and Patrick stopped breathing for what felt like several minutes.

Someone was pounding on the door to the store in a staccato complaint, and Patrick was the most uncomfortable he'd ever been during sex, even worse than the time he'd been blown in the walk-in fridge at Pete's girlfriend's restaurant. Spencer, however, was determined to take Patrick's mind off both the person trying to break into the store and the _thing_ with the razor sharp edges that he was lying on, using only a combination of suction, friction and heat, and Patrick handed his mind over willingly.

"Damn, you're loud," Spencer said, once Patrick had stopped thrashing around amongst the debris.

"Oh, fuck," Patrick managed to say, dragging his jeans back up and zipping them closed. "Exactly how frustrated do you think I was? I crashed at the store last night, with no privacy. I only hope I didn't spend the night humping Andy's leg."

Spencer pulled himself up on the edge of the counter, disappointingly dressed again, and held out a hand to Patrick. "I should let Ryan in, before he breaks something."

Patrick straightened his own T-shirt, then pushed his cap back on. "Ten minutes? Couldn't he have waited ten minutes?"

Spencer unbolted and unlocked the door, and Patrick slipped out, past a pissy looking Ryan and a queue of equally pissy looking customers.

"Honestly…" Patrick heard Ryan say, then he was mercifully out of ear shot, and within range of the shouting coming from Fall Out Boy.

"…eyes!" Joe was squawking. "I'm never going to get that out of my head! I'm going to have to fucking go to therapy now!"

Patrick stepped into the store, and found himself facing a bewildered customer, who was watching Joe shout at Pete.

"May I help you?" Patrick asked the customer, in his best Retail Service voice.

"I want to buy a book," the customer said, sounding panicked.

"One moment," Patrick said, then he turned to Joe and Pete. "You two, in the yard."

The pair of them slunk out the back, and Patrick smiled at the customer, hoping the customer couldn't distinguish between 'just-got-off' and 'I-care-about-your-reading-needs.'

"We have books. Which book would you like?"

"I don't know anything about it, except that it was green and had trees on the cover."

Patrick blinked. "Do you remember what it was about?"

The customer stared at Patrick, then said, "I haven't read the book. It was my mom's, and my dog just ate it, and I have to replace it before she gets home from work. Do you have the book?"

Patrick took a deep breath in. He'd handled every book in the store, over the past four days, but it had never occurred to him to mentally catalogue the things by the images on their covers.

"Right, books with trees on the covers…"

Patrick ducked around the shelves, clambering over the abandoned carpet cleaner, and held up TreX and LXaf, by TolkiXn, and the customer shook his head. Then The OnX TreX, by DXnaldson, again with no luck. The SXmmer TreX, GXy GavriXl KXy, and the customer also frowned unhappily.

At The Fxmily TreX, by SherrX TeppXr, the customer said, "That doesn't even have a green cover with a tree on it."

"Work with me here," Patrick said. "I'm trying to help you and your dog. What about these?" He held up The IntegrXl TreX, by LXrry NivXn and ShadX of the TreX, by Pixrs Anthxny, and the customer sighed and shrugged.

"De LXnt!" Patrick said, struck with inspiration, which is a fucking huge achievement under the circumstances. "Trees on all the covers, lots of green." He started grabbing De Lxnts off the shelf, holding them up for the customer to see. "Does your mom read De Lxnt?"

"I haven't got a clue," the customer said, then, when Patrick waved MoXnheart around, he shouted, "Yes! That one! That's what the dog ate!"

"Your dog owes you $15.95," Patrick said, carrying the book to the register. "Do you want me to peel the price sticker off the back, so your mom can't see where the book came from?"

"Please," the customer said. "And thanks, for saving my dog's life."

"You should congratulate your dog on having great taste," Patrick said, handing the book over to the customer when he'd paid. "And stop the dog from eating books."

When the customer had gone, Patrick opened the rear door of the store and let Pete and Joe back in.

"What the fuck were you two doing?" Patrick asked.

Pete lifted his fist, and Patrick sighed and held his own out for Pete to bump knuckles against, while Joe found a large bottle of electrolyte replacement fluid in the fridge and chugged half of it.

"Joe just saw too much," Pete said.

Joe lowered the bottle to glare at Pete through bloodshot eyes. "Far too much. I'm deeply traumatized. They're going to have to name a complex after you, Pete. You can't do that sort of thing when the store is open."

Pete shrugged. "I don't think Patrick minds, do you, babe?"

Pete slung his arm around Patrick's neck, hugging him, jamming his face against Patrick's, and Patrick said, "Whoa, Pete," because there was sharing, then there was over-sharing.

Pete chuckled against Patrick's ear, and Patrick knew he was in for an extensive debrief over Spencer at some stage. As long as Pete didn't feel the need to offer sex tips, Patrick could cope.

Joe put down the bottle of electrolyte replacement fluid and rubbed at his mouth, then his face creased in a frown and he patted his face. "Oh, fuck," Joe said. "I must have eaten something weird last night, something I was allergic to, because I've got this rash all over my face."

Pete burst out laughing, almost deafening Patrick, and Patrick shoved Pete away, trying not to laugh himself. "Yeah," Patrick said. "Um, yeah. There's something we need to talk to you about. About last night."

Joe froze, hand on the stubble rash on his chin, and Pete dissolved in helpless giggles, so Patrick hit Pete hard, making Pete whimper. "Ignore Pete. He can finish cleaning the carpet while you and I, um, oh fuck, stand outside."

On the sidewalk, once the carpet cleaner was roaring inside, Patrick said, "So, Joe, you were shit-faced last night. You did stupid things. Do you remember this?"

Joe shrugged. "Not really, not past the bit where Gabe caught fire. Why? What did I do?"

"Made out with Mikey."

Joe was silent, for far too long.

"Um, Joe?"

"Don't talk to me," Joe said. "Ever again. Actually, talk to me, I want to know what I did. Tell me what I did."

"We rescued you. You honor is intact."

"Details?"

"There was groping. And obviously you got stubble rash."

Joe grabbed Patrick's shoulders. "That's all?"

"That's all. Honestly. And you thought Mikey was a girl. That's what you told us."

"Can I die of embarrassment now?"

"Sure. Anytime you want to."

Joe turned around and pressed his face against the store window, groaning in horror, and when Patrick turned to pat his back consolingly, Pete was pressed against the inside of the store window, squeezed between the FXist display and the poster for the latest Star Wars novelization of a video game, pulling faces at them both.

"Joe?" Patrick asked, and Joe groaned.

"What?"

"While you were being wasted and stupid last night, did you notice me doing anything that I should remember?"

Joe turned his head sideways to look at Patrick, ignoring the sight of Pete's open mouth pressed against the other side of the glass.

"Um, no. You made out with Spencer. You sold books. You ate pizza. Why?"

Patrick could hear Pete saying, "Look at me! Look at me!" through the glass.

"I've just got this feeling that something happened, but I have no idea what it was."

Joe sighed. "Maybe you made out with a girl?"

Patrick glared at Joe. "I don't think so."

"Why don't you ask Andy? He wasn't wasted. And he doesn't live on Planet Pete. He'd know if you've been an idiot."

"Andy always thinks I've been an idiot," Patrick said. "Though I guess he might be able to provide specifics this time around."

Customers walked into the store, and Patrick knuckled Joe gently in the arm. "I should go serve those poor people. I don't think they deserve to be exposed to a shirtless Pete who is demanding attention."

"No one does," Joe called after Patrick, as Patrick walked into the store.


	7. Outside of a Dog

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [outside of a dog](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/outside+of+a+dog)  
  
---|---  
  
Title: Outside of a Dog  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Rating: It's going to be for grownups only. Expect sex.  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.  
Acknowledgments: A large tip of the keyboard to AlXson BechdXl, whose 'verse I might have borrowed from a little.

The customer stories in this chapter are **true**.

 

Chapter Seven

Patrick propped the store door open, running through the morning checklist in his head. PC on. Electronic banking terminal on and logged in. Float counted in, and corrected. Rude email on Pete's complete inability to perform simple arithmetic sent to all other store owners. Crud on carpet ignored. Shelves tidied.

It was morning. Patrick needed coffee.

The storeroom was a mess, and Patrick picked his way across sleeping bags and clothes to fill the kettle at the sink, then plug it in, right in front of the 'No Fucking On The Fridge Pete' sign. He had his own mug, the one with the thermal image of Darth Vader on it, and he shoveled coffee granules and sugar into it. He poured boiling water in, pausing for a moment to enjoy the image of Darth Vader changing into Anakin, then opened the fridge.

"Fuck you, Peter, you worthless shit," Patrick said, reaching for his cell phone and hitting speed dial.

The inside of the fridge was a fucking mess, with Andy's industrial-sized container of soy yoghurt on its side, the lid off and contents dripping across Joe's collection of cold pizza, subs and burgers. Patrick's leftover pad thai, put aside for his lunch, was coated in soy yoghurt, and while it wouldn't stop him from eating it, he estimated it was going to halve his eating pleasure.

"What?" Pete said sleepily, when he answered his phone.

"Fuck you, Peter, you worthless shit," Patrick said. "When we said 'no fucking on the fridge,' we meant it."

"Uh oh," Pete said, then he hung up.

Patrick took the real milk out of the fridge and scraped the soy yoghurt off the outside of the container, then poured some into his mug.

It didn't look good, with little bits of soy yoghurt floating in the coffee, but Patrick consoled himself with the thought that they hadn't owned the store or the fridge long enough for the milk to actually be off. Soon, it would be rancid milk in his mug, and he'd look back on the halcyon days of soy yoghurt-contaminated coffee.

Pete didn't arrive to clean up his mess, and he didn't answer his phone again, which showed a certain survival instinct in Patrick's opinion. Patrick complained to Andy by email, and to Joe in person, when Joe dropped in.

"Shut up," Joe snapped. "Did you have to toss all of your lunches for the next week in the dumpster?"

Patrick grumped, but didn't say anything.

"I didn't think so," Joe said.

"You could have reheated the burgers," Patrick ventured, when Joe came back from his second trip to the dumpster. "Soy yoghurt isn't like ordinary yoghurt."

"That's because it's not actually a food!" Joe shouted at Patrick. "It's something else entirely, especially when it's been microwaved. Aren't you supposed to be selling books or something?"

Patrick slunk back out into the store, to where the standard issue customer was standing waiting at the counter.

"Can I help you?" Patrick asked. He could never make up his mind whether it should be 'May I help you?' which was grammatically correct, but sounded stupid, or 'Can I help you?' which was more natural. When he'd brought it up at a company meeting, Pete had hit him, and Joe had drawn on his belly with a sharpie. Even Andy had laughed at him, though Patrick would have bet anything Andy had looked it up later.

"I'm looking for books on time travel," the customer said.

Patrick went to open his mouth, ready to launch into his usual suggestions, when the customer, the standard issue, dressed-in-black, obviously-a-geek, customer, cut him off.

"Non-fiction books."

Patrick closed his mouth.

"Do you have any?"

"Non-fiction books on time travel? Not many," Patrick said. "Actually, I can't think of any. Sorry."

The customer stomped out, and Joe burst out laughing, behind the ajar storeroom door.

"What the fuck?" Joe said, opening the door fully. "Why didn't you ask him when he was from?"

Patrick shrugged. "Because people like him come in all the time. At least I don't have to sell them sex toys too."

Another customer shuffled in the front door of the store, and Patrick winced. This customer was one of the grubby ones. Patrick and Pete were campaigning to be allowed to keep a small personal electric fan on the counter, just for these customers. The plan was to turn the fan on, pointing at the customer, to blast the smell away.

Joe looked at the guy, and slid back out into the storeroom.

"Coward," Patrick muttered.

Spencer wandered in, later in the afternoon, bearing a large bag of corn chips and a big grin.

"Hey there," Patrick said, over the pile of books stacked on the counter.

Spencer leaned over the counter, toppling some of the books over, and kissed Patrick briefly.

"Hi. You're busy, aren't you?"

Patrick picked up the manifest that had been in the carton of new books and swatted Spencer with it.

"No, I'm doing Goods Received transactions for the benefit of my health," Patrick said. "You're welcome to hang around, but if you stand there and call out numbers at random, bad things will happen to you."

Spencer looked blank. "Numbers at random?"

"Nothing messes up data entry like someone saying other numbers while you're trying to type," Patrick explained. "Really."

"Oh," Spencer said, a particularly evil glimmer in his eyes. "I must keep that in mind for our next delivery."

Patrick looked up from the screen he was staring at. "Ryan will hate you, won't he?"

"Ryan doesn't do stock management, not after what happened the time the shipment of CXbbage Pxtch Dxlls came in. Jon and I handle the stock entry, Ryan does the accounts, and Brendon is the overlord."

"Overlord?" Patrick asked, without looking up that time.

"Um, yeah. We tried being a democracy, and that didn't work, so now we're a benevolent dictatorship. What model are you using?"

"We've gone for a democratic model," Patrick said. "We considered proportional representation, and abandoned the idea. I'm not sure how letting Pete or Joe get what they want twenty five percent of the time would work. Can you shelve this for me?"

Patrick held out the book he'd just priced to Spencer.

By the time Spencer had worked out the reading order versus the published order of the FXists, and managed to slot the book into the right place on the shelf, Patrick had processed another dozen books, and Gerard had wandered into the store.

"Hey," Gerard said, leaning against the counter, sunglasses sliding down his nose, hair falling across his face. Patrick wondered if the smiley face on Gerard's T-shirt was ironic or not.

"Hey," Patrick said. "Can you shelve that for me?"

"What?" Gerard said, looking at the book Patrick had shoved into his hands.

"Alphabetical, on the shelves," Patrick said. "And in the right place in the series, if you can manage that too."

Gerard pushed his sunglasses up his nose and nodded. "Sure. I can do that."

When Andy ambled in, a few minutes later, Patrick had finished the Goods Received, and was perched on the stool behind the counter, directing Gerard and Spencer in the correct shelving order for the GXodkinds.

"No, that one is part of the second series," Patrick called out to Gerard. "Have a look inside the cover of the book you're holding."

Andy was still wearing his work clothes, and bristled deposit books and laptops when Patrick attempted to hug him.

"What's with the peanut gallery?" Andy asked, dumping his laptop behind the counter and gouging Patrick randomly with the bank deposit book.

"Conscripts," Patrick said. "Unwilling shelving volunteers."

"Who just happened to be loitering around the store?" Andy asked, voice low as he rummaged under the counter for the change bag.

"Guess so," Patrick said. "Hey, Gerard, did you actually drop in for a reason, before I forced you to engage with the ShXnnara universe?"

"Um, no," Gerard said. "You know, it's a bookstore. It has books."

Andy peered at Patrick through two layers of glasses for a moment, before slamming out to the storeroom, the banking and deposit book in his hands.

A moment later, the fridge squeaked, and Andy shouted, "And call Pete and tell him to get his ass in here to clean up the mess in the fridge and replace my yoghurt."

"Call him yourself," Patrick shouted back. "He won't talk to me at the moment."

"Gotta go," Spencer said, edging towards the doorway. "Ryan will want to hurl insults at me."

Gerard just nodded, and melted out of the door after Spencer.

Patrick listened to Andy muttering as he counted coins, the coins clinking faintly as well. The store was empty of customers when Andy came back out of the storeroom, plastic deposit bags sealed up ready to be dropped off, and Patrick said, "So, I'm not good with this subtext thing, or with working out what the fuck is going on, and I'm damned sure I've forgotten at least one critically important thing that happened at the launch party, but will someone who is not wasted or fucking crazy tell me what the fuck is going on?!"

Andy looked at Patrick, wearing his 'oh my God, Pete, I can see your penis' expression. "What? What's going on? What have you forgotten?"

Patrick took a deep breath. "Stuff is going on, you know, underneath the surface, and I can never figure that shit out. Tell me, because dropping clues is pointless. Email me, or text me, or whatever."

"Nothing is going on," Andy said. "Really."

"I'm calling 'bullshit' on that one," Patrick insisted. "And I know I've forgotten something that happened at the launch party, but I can't quite remember what it is. I think I did something stupid. Did you see me do something stupid?"

"Who told you that you did something stupid?" Andy asked, shoving the banking bags into his pack and leaning against the counter. "Did Pete?"

"Um, no, just me," Patrick said.

"You didn't do anything stupid, unless you think that hooking up with Spencer was a mistake."

Patrick crossed his arms and glared at Andy. "I like Spencer."

"Then you've done nothing stupid, though you probably could have waited twenty minutes and had Gerard instead, if you'd wanted someone older and crazier."

Patrick knew he was turning red, but he couldn't stop himself. "Gerard's not… He just… Anyway, don't you have banking to do?"

"The banking can wait," Andy said. "Indefinitely if necessary. I'm enjoying watching you realize Gerard has the hots for you too much to miss out on this."

Patrick was acutely aware that his entire face was burning. "Fuck you, Andrew, you bastard. You're supposed to be my friend. Besides Gerard is just superintending Mikey's romance with Pete."

"I've met Mikey. He eats rusty nails for fun, and requires no romantic assistance at all," Andy said. "Believe me, Gerard is here because, like many other people, he likes geeky guys with Darth Vader thermal coffee mugs and a detailed knowledge of SF minutiae."

Patrick flapped helplessly at Andy for a bit, and Andy leaned across and patted his cheek. "You're adorable when you're bewildered," Andy said. "I'm off to do the banking. See you at gaming tonight."

***

Over the litter of abandoned bowls of ramen, empty soda cans and AD &amp; D rule books, Andy said, "Have you asked Pete?"

"Asked Pete what?" Pete demanded, climbing up Patrick's side from where he'd slumped down into the couch while they waited for Joe to come back from toking.

"Andy…" Patrick said, tossing a die at Andy and missing.

"Asked me what?" Pete said, getting himself high enough to be in between Andy and Patrick's attempts at meaningful facial signals.

"Patrick thinks that he is missing out on subtext, and that he did something stupid at the launch party," Andy supplied helpfully. "He also didn't know that Gerard desires him."

"Andy!" Patrick shouted, over the top of Pete's delighted howls of laughter.

"Gerard wants your ass!" Pete hooted. "Or he wants you to want his. Some permutation of that. Big, dirty thoughts on his part, anyway. I'm delighted you've finally worked that one out."

"Fuck you, Andy, your assassin is going headfirst through the next trapdoor in the dungeon, regardless of what the dice say," Patrick said.

"Tell me about the subtext," Pete insisted. "I love subtext, it can be so dirty."

Patrick glared at Pete, and Pete's eyes widened in delight. "Oooh," Pete said excitedly. "So, there's Spencer, and there's Gerard. That's enough subtext for anyone. Are you having trouble juggling the two of them? I can give you time management tips."

"And your Cleric is so fucking doomed," Patrick said. "Just so we're clear. Cleric Go Boom. Show How Monster Works. Do clerics wear red shirts?"

"And you did something stupid at the launch? What? With both of them at once?" Pete shook his head. "No, someone would have mentioned that. What did you do?"

Patrick sighed. "I have no fucking clue. I just feel like I've done something."

Pete kissed both of Patrick's cheeks, dislodging Patrick's glasses. "Idiot, I feel like that all the time. It's called 'taking risks.' And 'being alive.' You'll get used to it."

"I hate you," Patrick said, shoving Pete off his lap, then jamming his glasses back on. "Just because I don't live in a permanent state of crisis doesn't mean that I'm fucking dead. How come you don't accuse Andy of being dead?"

"Hey," Andy said. "Leave me out of your domestic squabbles."

Pete was still untangling himself from the legs of the coffee table, so Patrick stepped over him and clambered into Andy's lap. "I thought you wanted to be part of the Pete-and-Patrick world view."

Andy waved his arms randomly, either fighting Patrick off ineffectually, or trying to push his own hair out of his eyes--Patrick couldn't tell.

Pete wasn't light, especially not when he'd built up some momentum, and Andy made a wounded sound, gasping for breath when Pete landed on top of Patrick.

"You want to be one of us?" Pete asked, sounded delighted. "Wow. We can do stuff together, you know, like bonding."

"Get off me," Andy groaned.

"No, really," Pete insisted. "Like the Mia Kirshner movie marathon Patrick and I had."

Andy heaved, underneath Patrick, without managing to dislodge either of them. "Please, no."

"Or stay over," Pete said. "Stay tonight since tomorrow's Saturday, like Patrick always does after gaming. It'll be fun!"

"Okay," Andy said, shoving at Pete. "Just get off me."

Pete kissed Andy's nose, then Patrick's, and tumbled backwards over the arm of Andy's easy chair just as Joe wandered back into the living room.

"Andy's staying!" Pete told Joe, from upside down on the floor.

"What? Permanently?" Joe asked, standing on Pete's hair where it had flopped back onto the carpet, making Pete squeal.

"Is there space?" Patrick asked dubiously, over the top of Pete's yells. "Pete's room is pretty feral, and while I'm used to the whole love-me-love-my-naked-body thing, are you sure you're up to that first thing in the morning, Andy?"

"Get off my hair, you fucker!" Pete squawked, managing to turn his head enough to bite Joe's ankle.

Pete kicked Patrick in the face in the process of heaving himself off the chair and at Joe, making Patrick bellow in pain, and Pete dragged Joe over, onto the coffee table and off Pete's hair.

A minute later, while Patrick held ice against his face and Pete was in the bathroom, assessing follicular damage, Joe tossed broken ramen bowls into the bin and said, "So you're moving in, huh, Andy? Does that mean Patrick is too?"

Andy rescued one of Patrick's AD&amp;D rule books and handed it to Patrick, then ditched an abandoned pizza box of uncertain vintage into the bin. "That wasn't the plan. I think I'm just crashing here tonight. I'm going to go shower, if Pete will let me in the bathroom, since I don't think there's much point in going back to the game, is there?"

Patrick took the icepack off his cheek and shook his head. "Game's over, for now. Next time, Pete's Cleric will demonstrate why no one should ever kick the GM in the fucking face on gaming night."

The bathroom door closed, and Patrick could hear Andy and Pete arguing, even through the door. Joe propped the coffee table back up on its three remaining legs, and shoved one of Patrick's rule books under where the fourth leg had been to hold the table steady, then said, "Hope you know what you're doing."

"What?" Patrick said.

Joe fished soda cans out from under the couch, crunched them under his knees, then tossed them into the bin. "I guess that, joking aside, we're all kind of married now, you know, what with the business and all. Gonna be hard avoiding people."

Patrick peered at Joe over the top of the icepack on his cheek. "Joe, you're making less sense than usual."

Joe shrugged. "I guess it's been a long time coming, and that's something I don't want to think about, and you're all grownups and everything."

Joe dragged the full bin down the hall, and out of the apartment, and Patrick must still have been looking confused or concussed, because Pete's re-entry onto the couch was far more controlled than usual, and didn't involve any body contact.

"What's up?" Pete asked.

Patrick shifted the icepack to his forehead and sighed. "Are things weirder than usual?"

"No," Pete said. "Can you see the bald patch where Joe pulled my hair out?"

Patrick glanced at where Pete was pointing at his scalp. "No."

"C'mon, let's go fight Andy for the decent pillow."

Twenty minutes later, Patrick was drifting into a good place, his body heavy and warm and Pete's voice droning pleasantly somewhere around his shoulder blade.

"…understood the implications of switching to a mixed fuel system," Pete said. "There're trade-offs in economy, of course, but you gain so much flexibility in sourcing your power."

On the other side of Patrick, Andy groaned into the other half of the decent pillow. "I warned you," Patrick said sleepily. "But you didn't believe me, did you?"

"No," Andy said. "I thought you were joking."

"Just relax into it," Patrick said, burrowing himself deeper under the blankets, so his nose was against Andy's arm. "Let it wash over you…"

"…harnessing the waste heat from the differential," Pete said. "Along with the gearbox…"

"Wash over me?" Andy asked.

Patrick nodded, and Andy rolled over, sliding his arm around Patrick and hugging him.

"Like, um, waves or something," Patrick said.

"Sound waves," Andy said, sounding rueful, then Pete slung a leg over Patrick's and hugged Patrick too, and Patrick went to sleep still smiling in dark.

***

Pale and watery light was seeping into the room when Patrick opened his eyes. It was too early for Pete's first or second alarms to be binging or shrieking, and it took a little while for Patrick to work out what had woken him.

Someone was touching his back, running their hand slowly from his neck down to his hip in gentle strokes, tracing the bumps of his spine, pressing into the muscles at the base of his spine where he always ached, over his ass, then floating back up to settle at his neck, ready to smooth down again. It was the kind of touch that only a lover or a very best friend could give, making Patrick tingle and hum in the best possible way.

Patrick thought about reaching out and patting Pete, just to acknowledge how fucking good it felt, except then Pete would start talking again, and if Pete woke Andy, then Andy might kill Pete, and then Pete would stop stroking Patrick's back…

Better for everyone to lie there in blissful silence and hope Pete knew how much Patrick loved him right at that moment. Patrick would express that love by cleaning up the mess in the work fridge, so everyone else would stop hating Pete. That would be a noble and grand gesture of undying gratitude that might just encompass the joy that Pete was bringing to Patrick's life.

***

Patrick washed his hands at the sink for a second time, in the hope of getting the smell of soy yoghurt off them, and wiped them on his work T-shirt, then wandered out into the store.

"That's for you," Pete said, pointing at the take way cup of coffee on the counter, and Patrick pounced on it.

"Oh, fuck, thank you," Patrick said.

"Don't thank me," Pete said. "Andy went and got it."

Andy looked up from where he was sitting on the floor, beside the rack of graphic novels, rereading the first TransmetropolXtan volume. "I did indeed, as a token of appreciation for you cleaning up the mess in the fridge. I don't know what exchange of favors occurred between you two, but I'm just grateful the transaction happened. It's added an extra sheen to my Saturday plans of hanging out here, reading the one in four books I own, and watching the two of you work."

Patrick grinned at Pete, over the brim of his coffee cup, and Pete looked confusedly back at him.

"Huh?" Pete said. "What?"

"Never mind," Patrick said. "It's just the best fucking day ever."

Pete adjusted the arrangement of barrettes in his hair, and beamed back at Patrick. "I love you," he said. "You and your rollercoaster mood swings. Cranky one moment, then like someone shot Disney rainbows up your ass the next."

Patrick opened his mouth to defend his honor, but he could hear Andy trying to muffle laughter behind him, and it seemed wiser not to attempt anything under the circumstances. Better to drink his coffee and check his email, while Pete sold yet another copy of the latest fucking twinkling vampire book.

Patrick looked up from the screen a few minutes later when Pete said, "Hi, Spencer."

Patrick was aware of both Andy and Pete watching as Spencer leaned across the counter to kiss him, and if Pete had been within hurting range, Patrick would have done something to make him stop humming 'It's a Small World After All'.

"Hey," Spencer said. "Coffee's just brewed at Panic. I brought you a mug."

Patrick pushed the takeaway cup he'd just emptied behind the cash register and took the mug that Spencer handed him. "Wow, thanks."

"Where's mine?" Pete asked, elbowing his way in beside Patrick.

"Ryan and Brendon are in the store," Spencer said. "With coffee."

Pete was gone, pushing past browsing customers and out the front door.

Patrick sold a stack of gaming tie-in novels to a kid carrying a sword, then said, "Where did Andy go? Did you see, Spencer?"

"Out the back, I think," Spencer said. "Do you want to go find him? I can serve customers for you, if you need me to."

"As long as he comes back eventually," Patrick said. "Pete I'm less hopeful of."

"It's Saturday, and that's crazytimes at Panic," Spencer said. "Brendon will exert his authority and throw Pete out after about fifteen minutes. I really came over to see if you wanted to go out tonight. We could grab a meal after work, then hang out at Chemical Love perhaps…"

"I'd like that," Patrick said, and he could feel he was smiling so widely his cheeks were creasing.

A customer dropped AmXrican GXds on the counter and glared at Patrick, and Patrick smiled back at the customer. "Can you tell me what the expected release date for the last WhXel of TXme book is?" the customer asked.

"I'll send Pete back," Spencer said. "Enjoy your coffee."

Patrick sold books and answered stupid questions by himself for long enough that the edge had begun to slip off his good mood, when the next customer in the queue wasn't a customer at all.

Gerard, who seemed to have been taking lessons in dressing from Pete, was wearing an enormous black coat that dragged on the ground, a black cowboy hat and mirror shades. He nodded at Patrick and handed him a takeaway mug of coffee, then swept out of the bookstore, coat trailing behind him.

Patrick blinked, then looked at the unicorn drawn on the cardboard mug, obviously before it had been filled with coffee.

The customer behind Gerard in the queue said, "Excuse me, can you recommend any good fantasy authors."

"Um, sure," Patrick said. "Who have you read lately that you really enjoyed? It will help me choose a new author for you to try."

"DavXd GemmXll," the customer said. "It has to be fantasy, you understand."

"Okay," Patrick said. "You don't read science fiction at all?"

"No," the customer said. "It's disrespectful to the aliens."

Not allowed to laugh. Not allowed to laugh. Not allowed to laugh.

Patrick held out until the customer was almost out the door, carrying a McCxffrey book that Patrick knew full well was SF masquerading as fantasy.

Patrick was still laughing when Andy came back, bag from the comic store a block away in his hands, which answered the question of where he'd disappeared to.

"I ran into Gerard," Andy said. "He's invited all of us to Chemical Love tonight, on the condition we guarantee that Pete doesn't hook up with some guy called Frank. Want to go?"

"I'm kind of going already," Patrick said.

"Great," Andy said. "Who's Frank?"

"I think Frank is the crazy barman. You explained we offered no guarantees when it came to Pete?"

"I did," Andy said. "Force of nature and all that. Gerard looked pained, at least I think he did. It was hard to tell, behind the mirror shades. He said that Frank was the same, and he just hoped that Frank was too busy to notice Pete, or that Mikey broke Frank's arm or something. You okay? You seem jittery."

Patrick picked up the empty takeaway coffee cup with the unicorn on it. "It's possible I've had too much caffeine too quickly."


	8. Outside of a Dog

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [outside of a dog](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/outside+of+a+dog)  
  
---|---  
  
Title: Outside of a Dog  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Rating: It's going to be for grownups only. Expect sex.  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.  
Acknowledgments: A large tip of the keyboard to AlXson BechdXl, whose 'verse I might have borrowed from a little.

 

Chapter Eight

Chemical Love was jumping, full to capacity with a queue out the front that snaked down the sidewalk and kept the two bouncers busy. It wasn't Edge night, so the place stunk of spilled booze and stale smoke and the toilets were so hideous that Patrick was opting to use the toilet in the courtyard that bookstore had the keys to.

Spencer slung his arm around Patrick's shoulders and clinked his bottle of beer against Patrick's water bottle. "This is great!" Spencer shouted, over the boom of the music.

Patrick nodded, rather than try and shout back. It kind of almost was, when they were thrashing around with the crowd on the dance floor, getting all hot and sweaty together, and Spencer wasn't being drunk at Patrick. "Wanna dance some more?" Patrick shouted.

Spencer lifted his beer back at Patrick and removed his arm so he had a hand free to make toking motions with. "Later. Is Joe here?"

Patrick pointed towards the back of the club, to where he knew Joe was doing whatever it was Joe did that Joe didn't talk about.

"Back in a bit," Spencer shouted.

Patrick watched Spencer push through the bodies beside the bar, and shoved his bottle of water in a pocket of his jeans.

Patrick found Pete hanging around the bar, and Pete dragged him to a quieter corner. Patrick leaned against the wall behind them and tried not to think about why it might be sticky. "Thanks, you know, for this morning. That was so good, and you're the best kind of friend."

Pete looked pleased and smug, then said, "What did I do?"

"The back stroking. Remember? It was really early, before your first alarm."

Pete's face was blank.

Patrick said, "Turn around," and grabbed Pete's shoulder, pushing him face forward, against the acoustic tiles. "Like this."

Pete hitched his T-shirt up, when Patrick pushed at the material, then dissolved helplessly against the wall when Patrick stroked slow hands down his back.

"Oh, fuck," Pete whimpered. "Yes, oh, gnhhh, ahhh."

"Like that," Patrick said, helping Pete back to his feet again.

Pete clung to Patrick. "Baby," Pete said. "I hate to tell you this, but whoever it was with the magic hands, it wasn't me. I was actually asleep for a few precious hours last night, safe in your arms, and both the first and second alarms woke me up. Whoever it was who was rubbing your back like that, you need to find him and marry him."

Patrick pushed his hat on more firmly, and tried to get his head around the idea that Andy had been stroking his back.

"Fuck, either someone broke into the apartment and massaged you, or it was Andy," Pete said.

"I'd worked that out," Patrick said. "He has got incredibly good hands."

"He has?" Pete asked. "Exactly how the fuck do you know that?"

"There, um, might have been some late night neck massages before," Patrick admitted. "When we've slept at the store."

Pete unwound himself from Patrick, and Patrick pulled his hat lower and avoided Pete's pursed lips and determined inspection.

"Is there any chance that Andy might be pursuing you?" Pete asked. "That he might want to go there with you?"

Patrick clapped a hand over his mouth and gasped. "Fuckfuckfuck."

Pete nodded, managing to look wise and sensible. "Welcome to the real world, Patrick."

"No! That's what he said! That's what I haven't been able to remember!"

"What?" Pete asked, going from 'wise and sensible' to 'eager and curious' in an instant.

"Andy--he said he wanted to go there with me, when I was falling asleep after the launch party. Oh, fuck, how did I manage to forget that?" Patrick said. "What the fuck do I do about this now?"

"Go and find him, take your shirt off and ask him to rub your back?" Pete suggested. "I'm the idiot, for not noticing this. He even bought you a freaking cup of coffee this morning, along with your other two pursuers. How obvious does he have to be?"

"Pretty fucking obvious," Patrick said, sliding down the wall to squat on the floor. "This is me, after all."

Pete knelt down beside him. "C'mon. What are you waiting for?"

"You don't get it, do you?" Patrick said. "It's all making so much sense now. Joe's incomprehensibly vague warnings last night were actually him being completely rational, for him anyway, and telling me to take it carefully with Andy. Fuck, Joe's right, because we're all stuck in this bookstore together, and if I fuck this up, it'll be a nightmare for everyone."

Patrick put his hands over his face and groaned. "I can't do this, Pete," he said indistinctly. "We're friends!"

"Is Patrick not feeling well?" Gerard's voice asked, and Patrick groaned even louder. "He can rest in my office if he needs to."

Pete slapped Patrick on the shoulder. "Do you want to, Patrick?"

"I want to go home," Patrick said, peering through his fingers, and finding himself looking at the variously worried and/or trashed faces of Gerard, Mikey, Spencer, Joe, Ryan and Andy. "Now."

"Andy will take you home, right?" Pete said, helping Patrick to his feet.

"Course I will," Andy said. "C'mon, Patrick."

"I hate you," Patrick told Pete, over his shoulder, as he followed Andy past the others, and Pete just waved at him.

"Are you okay?" Andy asked, once they were outside the club, and out of the noise. "Do you think there's a chance someone got at your water bottle?"

"My water bottle's safe," Patrick said, as Andy unlocked his car. "And I feel okay now. I just went odd for a bit."

"You're not working tomorrow," Andy said. "I'll text Joe and Pete, make sure they know. Sleep in, contemplate the inadequately catalogued state of your personal library, hang around online auction sites bemoaning the price of collectible figurines, that sort of thing."

"Sorry if I ruined your night out," Patrick said, once Andy was driving.

"Non-Edge nights are not good," Andy said. "I was considering heading home anyway, before someone threw up on me or something. Were you having a good time, before you felt ill?"

"No," Patrick said. "Not really. Spencer was getting wasted, by himself. I'd pretty much wandered off, and was hanging out with Pete."

"Oh," Andy said.

"I've worked out exactly how I've been an idiot," Patrick said. "No need to go into details, but Pete might have smacked my head against some things it needed smacking against."

"I wouldn't always trust Pete's judgments on things," Andy said.

When Patrick glanced at Andy's face in the flickering streetlights, he looked serious, and Patrick didn't say anything more, not until Andy pulled up, in front of Patrick's mom's house.

"Get some sleep, without Pete talking all night," Andy said.

"Thanks, for the ride," Patrick said, and on impulse Patrick leaned across the seat and kissed Andy, where Andy's beard straggled up his cheek

Patrick let himself into the house quietly, and tiptoed past the living room, where his mom's meditation group was working on some project or other. If Patrick was home more often, he'd keep track of these things, but he had no idea if they were omming for peace, someone's planned conception or a fertile compost heap that week.

He fell onto his own bed, kicking his shoes off, then rolled onto his back. He had text messages, of course, from Pete, demanding updates, and from Gerard and Spencer, wanting to know how he was.

He sent Pete a message to say he was in his own bed, alone, and laughed at the response, which detailed the ways in which he was failing to seduce Andy. Spencer was trickier, and Patrick wished, not for the first time, that he had Pete's particular combination of outrageous self-esteem, glib words and savoir faire. 'What would Pete do?' wasn't a question Patrick asked himself very often, not with any genuine interest in the answer.

'Deal with it later' was a perfectly valid answer, so Patrick texted back that he fine and going to sleep.

Downstairs, the dykes in the meditation group were moving around, laughing in the kitchen, clattering plates and calling to each other, their voices distant through Patrick's locked bedroom door. Patrick let himself go back to that morning, to the feeling of Andy touching him.

"Oh, fuck," Patrick muttered. It had been hot enough at the time, even thinking Pete was doing it. Knowing now it had been Andy's hands, and that Andy wanted him, was a huge fucking turn on. Fuck, if that was how Andy touched him when he was asleep, then Patrick's imagination was melting down at the idea of Andy fucking him.

Patrick ditched his clothes onto the floor beside his bed and pulled his box of toys out from under his bed. Thanks to Mad Wombyn Books and his staff discount, he had a collection that even Pete envied.

Cool lube, slipping down Patrick's fingers, then across his ass, and he slid the smallest glass screw in. The cold was so fucking good inside him, while he jerked himself slowly, sending shivers running through him, his brain looping the feeling of Andy's hands on his back.

Usually that would be all he'd do, just the cold glass warming was enough, but his imagination was burning a fucking hole in his body, making him want things, want hands on his ass, a cock pushing into him, something to set him on fire.

He didn't have to justify what he did in private, not even to himself. He didn't even have to necessarily admit what he did to himself either. He had half a dozen different brands of condoms tossed in the box, and it could even have been random chance that he grabbed a vegan condom to roll on the latex dildo.

The glass screw clattered onto the floor, and Patrick grunted as he worked the latex into himself. Fuck, he hadn't done this for too long; he was too fucking lazy most of the time.

He pushed his glasses off and rolled over, one hand wedged under himself and wrapped around his cock, and fuck yeah, he was seeing stars now, breathing hard into his pillow. He ground down into his hand, teeth gritted, hanging onto the burning inside for as long as he could, then he was coming hard and tight, his other hand clamped over his mouth to muffle his gasps.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Patrick muttered to himself, rolling back over carefully, and easing the toy out. He tossed the condom and hid the box back under his bed again. "You are so fucked, kid."

***

Sleeping in took care of a decent chunk of Sunday, and Patrick felt obliged to do some minimal domestic duties, like load the washing machine a couple of times, as well. Then, fortified by a graze through the contents of his mom's fridge, Patrick loaded his entire SandmXn collection into his pack and borrowed his mom's bike.

Andy lived in a large fannish household, with a bunch of hardcore geeks who made even Patrick look moderate and well-adjusted. Patrick liked Andy's housemates in general, even if they scared him a little.

Matt opened the door, eyes widening a little at seeing Patrick on their porch, then he grinned. "Hey," Matt said. "Cool, come in. You here to see Andy? He's around."

"Thanks. You guys have a good time at the con in Boston?" Patrick said, wheeling his bike into the hall, and lifting a hand in greeting to Rossman, who was huddled over a PC in the living room. Rossman ignored Patrick in favor of shouting abuse over a headset at whoever he was playing WoW with.

"Boston was awesome," Matt said. "Sorry we missed the launch party for the store. Did Andy take in our bulk order?"

"It's been processed," Patrick said. "Delivery in four to ten days, and can I just thank you for your custom. Did Andy tell you Fall Out Boy has decided this household is actually a library, and we've decided to extend the library discount to you?"

"He did," Matt said. "That's great. Andy's in his room."

Patrick picked his way across the snaking lengths of blue and red ethernet cabling that lined the passageway and stairs, and decided he wasn't imagining the significant glances that Rossman and Matt had exchanged behind his back.

Andy's door was open, and Andy was sprawled on his unmade bed, laptop in front of him, bed covered in paperwork.

"Hey," Patrick said. "Am I interrupting?"

Andy grinned, pushing papers aside and clambering off his bed. "Hi, come on in. I was looking over the store invoices and trying not to worry. You can either join me and fret, or I can put all the invoices away, and we can talk about something other than the store."

Patrick thudded his pack down on Andy's bed. "I come bearing the complete run of SandmXn. Feel like seeing how far through the series we can read before our brains explode?"

Andy swept the invoices up into a pile, and shut his laptop. "Pull up some mattress, and I'll get my volumes out. We can break for food somewhere around SeasXns of Mxsts."

Patrick toed his sneakers off and flopped onto Andy's bed, then pulled out PrelXdes and NocturnXs. Andy cleared the mess off the bed, retrieved the first couple of SandmXn volumes off the shelves beside the bed and settled beside Patrick.

Somewhere around the middle of DreXm CountrX, Andy turned the bedside light on and disappeared downstairs, returning with rubbery vegan cookies and two glasses of fresh wheatgrass. Patrick, his stomach hardened by a lifetime of nutritious snacks, made all the right noises and ate the cookies appreciatively, washing the taste away with wheatgrass.

"I should go soon," Patrick said. "I rode my mom's bike over."

Andy held out another cookie. "We can toss the bike on the back of my car, if you want to hang around. Matt's making pasta for dinner, and there will be plenty."

Patrick nodded, stretching out on the bed and taking the cookie. Andy's room was pleasantly messy, without the impending social collapse of Pete's room or the imminent rodent infestation of Joe's. The bedside light was making the glow-in-the-dark Darth Vader poster fluoresce, and Patrick kind of wanted to turn the light off and goof around with Andy's light saber, but there wasn't any way of asking without it sounding dirty.

Actually, if Patrick was honest, he probably was just sublimating what he really wanted to do anyway.

"You've got that faraway look you sometimes get," Andy said, propping himself on one elbow beside Patrick. "I can never tell if you're planning something evil, or contemplating your dinner."

"I haven't talked to Spencer yet," Patrick said. "But I'm going to tell him that I'm not interested in being with someone who gets wasted when we're out together. I don't care what he does on his own time, but he got trashed last night, and that just feels wrong."

If the sudden change of subject surprised Andy, he didn't show it, but they were all used to Pete, who had conversational ADD, and could change topic mid-word, and several times if the word had lots of syllables.

"Okay, good call," Andy said. "I'm kind of surprised you gave Spencer that much of a chance, but hey, that's your business."

"I guess it's like media and literary fans dating," Patrick said. "It never works out."

Andy nodded wisely. "I have doubts about Marvel and DC mixed marriages too, but I'd be willing to take that under advisement."

"You're just a purist," Patrick said, laughing. "That's taking things too far."

"Does this mean you're going to go out with Gerard?" Andy asked, sprawling back with DreXm CountrX propped open so that Patrick couldn't see his face.

"I think Gerard is fucking crazy," Patrick said. "And I get enough of that shit from Pete already. I was going to pass on that particular source of trouble, thanks. I think it's going to be bad enough with Mikey and Pete bonding."

He opened his own copy of DreXm CountrX and went back to the story that riffed on Shakespeare, letting GaimXn's sheer fucking genius wash over him, until Andy peered over the top of Patrick's book.

Patrick lowered his book.

"Do you think you could let me know when you've had a chance to talk to Spencer?" Andy asked.

Patrick nodded, and when Andy went back to reading, Patrick was grinning to himself.

After dinner, which was announced by nerf gun rounds fired into the room at random, Andy lashed Patrick's bike to the back of his car.

Outside Patrick's house, once the bike had been removed, Andy hugged Patrick. "You right to work tomorrow? You don't think you're getting sick or something?"

Patrick hugged Andy back. "I feel fine. Really."

"I'll be in to do the banking," Andy said, letting go of Patrick. "See you then."

Patrick looked at Andy in the streetlight, and decided that while Pete's scream-and-leap style of role-playing mostly led to disaster, as an approach to personal relationships, it had a certain appeal.

"Hang on," Patrick said, grabbing the front of Andy's Firefly T-shirt with both hands, making Andy squawk, then Patrick shut Andy up by pressing his mouth against Andy's.

Andy jumped, and Patrick heard him swear under his breath, then Andy's hands cupped Patrick's face and their lips moved together.

Between the warmth of Andy's hands and the slide of their lips together, Patrick just about melted, and he was unsteady on his feet when Andy took a step back suddenly.

Patrick jerked his eyes open and let go of Andy's T-shirt.

"Getting in my car and driving away," Andy said, and he sounded pretty much like Patrick felt—and Patrick felt like he'd been on the receiving end of the [Monty Python Fish Slapping Dance](http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=IhJQp-q1Y1s).

Patrick nodded, and he stood on the sidewalk, pack over one shoulder, holding his mom's bike up, and watched the rear lights of Andy's car disappear, then reached for his phone.

"What?" Pete asked, and Patrick didn't even care that he hadn't texted first.

"So," Patrick said. "There's been kissing."

Pete hooted, and Patrick could hear him talking to someone else for a moment, voices muffled. "Excellent. Why did you stop there?"

Patrick grinned to himself. "Just because. Talk to you tomorrow. Say hi to Mikey for me."

"How'd you know it was Mikey?"

"Educated guess," Patrick said. "Have a good night."


	9. Outside of a Dog

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [outside of a dog](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/outside+of+a+dog)  
  
---|---  
  
Title: Outside of a Dog  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Rating: It's going to be for grownups only. Expect sex.  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.  
Acknowledgments: A large tip of the keyboard to AlXson BechdXl, whose 'verse I might have borrowed from a little.

 

Chapter Nine

 

Patrick's List of Hate for Monday had the usual things on it, like remembering to initiate the once-a-week fridge cleanout for the store, because if they didn't set up a routine right at the beginning, they'd find themselves four months later with a Nuclear/Biological/Chemical alert issued on Joe's abandoned lunches. It also had a big, fat Talk to Spencer item, right at the top, above everything else.

Pete had abandoned any pretence at wearing the Fall Out Boy uniform T-shirt, and had turned up for work half an hour late and dressed in a Don't Google Yourself T-shirt and a white denim jacket, both of which Patrick suspected belonged to someone else, probably Mikey. "Do you want me to dump Spencer for you?" Pete asked. "I could, you know. I've ditched enough people to know exactly how to do it."

"I'm just about desperate enough to actually consider your offer," Patrick said. "Do you have any advice that's well-adjusted?"

"There's no good way, so you might as well minimize the inconvenience to yourself and do it quickly and cleanly," Pete said. "Don't hang around for the histrionics, and don't apologize."

Patrick shook his head in disbelief. "I'm even more amazed that any of your exes still talk to you."

"What do you do then?" Pete asked.

Patrick thought back. "Um, I think every time I've broken up with someone, either they've dropped me, or it's been a mutual decision, with no hard feelings."

"You weren't really going out with Spencer, anyway, so I can't see why there'd be any drama," Pete said. "In your position, I would have just stopped calling him."

"But you're an asshole," Patrick said. "I took a quick poll, on your blog, if you want some confirmation."

"You did what?!" Pete shoved Patrick away from the keyboard of the store PC, tapping at the keys frantically to log himself in.

"I'm going to go find Spencer," Patrick said. "While you write a post explaining how you're not actually as poorly socialized as we all think you are."

Jon, who Patrick had only met a couple of times, was behind the counter at Panic Toys, but he waved at Patrick and said, "Hi. Spencer is out the back, with a shipment of LegX and no paperwork, if you're looking for him."

"Thanks," Patrick said, squeezing around behind the counter and Jon, and into Panic's storeroom, where Spencer was perched on top of a carton, surrounded by many other cartons, swearing steadily as he scribbled the codes of the boxes of toys beside him.

Patrick waited for Spencer to finish what he was writing, and resisted the urge to call out random numbers, then Spencer said, "Um, hi. I didn't think I'd see you today, since you didn't call yesterday. I thought you'd have the flu or something."

Patrick shrugged. "I wanted to see you, face to face."

"Uh oh," Spencer said. "That's not good."

"No, it's not. I'm not comfortable with what happened on Saturday night, with how you got wasted when we were out together. I'm Edge, and booze and pot aren't part of my life."

"Okay," Spencer said. "It's how I party, but this is something we can sort out, isn't it?"

Patrick shoved his hands into his pockets. "Honestly? I guess it could be, except there's an Edge guy I'm interested in. Under these circumstances, I'm just going to walk away."

He resisted the urge to apologize, because Pete was probably right about that part, at least.

Spencer nodded, and Patrick said, "I'll see you around," and let himself out of the storeroom, past Jon, who wasn't even trying to look like he hadn't been eavesdropping.

He stopped outside the nail salon, and texted Andy, because even though Andy's workplace was cruel and unusual, and didn't allow Andy email or cell phone access during work hours, Andy would check both during his lunch break.

Pete looked up from the keyboard and screen, and said, "Well?" when Patrick walked back into the bookstore.

Patrick leaned against Pete and wrapped arms around him. "Done. I was callous and cruel."

Pete hugged him back. "You heart-breaker."

"I'm going to comment on your blog again," Patrick said. "And let me just add 'Pete' to today's List of Hate."

"You don't hate me," Pete said, leaning his head contentedly on Patrick's shoulder and possibly startling the only customer in the store, who was browsing the graphic novels.

Patrick could smell Mikey on Pete's borrowed clothes, a little musky and sweaty, and he decided he liked the way Pete and Mikey smelled together. "No, I don't," Patrick admitted. "But it is still your turn to clear up the storeroom, since I did the fridge."

***

By late afternoon, Patrick and Pete had negotiated a truce on the subject of their personal lives, after things had escalated messily.

"You shouldn't have a password that can be guessed so easily," Patrick said, trying to squirm free of Pete's grip. "Then I couldn't hijack your blog."

"It's not freaking easy to guess," Pete said, tightening his hold on Patrick's wrists. "You're just inside my fucking head. No one else knows the name of my imaginary friend from grade school. And you shouldn't be so thin-skinned."

"Ow," Patrick said, as Pete dragged his hands further up his back. "It's not being thin-skinned I'm worried about. It's being thin-boned."

The guy in the suit on the other side of the counter sighed wearily. "Can I buy a book? Is it too much to ask?"

"Let go of me, Pete," Patrick said. "There's money involved."

Pete let go of Patrick's hands and ducked out of reach, in one smooth movement, and Patrick served the customer.

"Are you two brothers?" the customer asked, taking his change.

"No, best friends," Patrick said. "But we should have been siblings."

The customer nodded and took his book.

Joe came in next, bearing soda and corn chips for everyone, and still wearing his grubby work clothes and smelling of fertilizer. He handed Patrick a soda and sat down wearily on the carpet, leaning back against the edge of a bookcase.

"I'm ready," Joe announced.

"For what?" Patrick asked.

"For the floor show," Joe said. "Pete promised me some serious action, when Andy turns up here."

Patrick turned slowly to glare at Pete, who cringed and hid behind a rack of Star Wars novels. "No, I didn't," Pete said. "I didn't say anything of the sort, Joe. You're imagining it. Hallucinating, or something."

"Floor show?" Patrick asked Joe. "Did Pete give you any particulars?"

Joe dug into the bag of corn chips he was holding. "No, he just said to bring snacks. Hey, here's Andy now! He'll know."

"I'll know what?" Andy asked, as he swung his pack onto the counter and pulled the banking deposit bags out.

Patrick leaned across and grabbed a handful of the back of Pete's T-shirt, just as Pete began to bolt for the storeroom door. "Why Pete is an idiot," Patrick said.

"I can't answer that," Andy said. "Not in a few short sentences."

A customer walked up to the counter, beside Andy, and Patrick let go of Pete and smiled at her. She was vaguely familiar, in a way that a lot of young dykes were. He'd either sold her books before, or they'd seen each other around the queer community somewhere.

She grinned at him and handed him the TXnk GXrl anthologies in her hands, and the money.

"Hi there," she said. "I wondered where you'd gone to, since you weren't at Mad Wombyn when I dropped in there earlier. I like the range here, too. Mad Wombyn would never sell me TXnk GXrl."

"TXnk GXrl is so deeply transgressive in so many ways," Patrick said. "You've got to love a comic that offends everyone all the time."

"Hey, I just want to thank you for the advice you gave me about the glass anal screw," the dyke said, and Patrick suddenly knew exactly which customer from Mad Wombyn Books she was. "You were completely right, and it's just the best thing ever."

Patrick knew he'd gone deep red, and that Pete, Joe and Andy were all listening intently, but there wasn't much he could do about it. "Really? That's good. Did your girlfriend like the silicon lube?"

"Ex-girlfriend," the dyke said. "I didn't need to worry about her too much. Now it's just me and the anal screw, but that's cool. Listen, you should totally sell sex toys here! I'd come here and buy toys, and I'd tell all my friends. You give the best advice."

"Um, thanks," Patrick said, managing to put the volumes into a bag and hand the dyke her change.

She strolled out the store, Patrick thudded his forehead against the counter, and Pete exploded in shrieks of laughter. "Just fucking kill me now," Patrick said. "Okay?"

"She was seriously hot," Joe's voice announced. "Did you really sell her sex toys?"

"Go away," Patrick said, without lifting his head. "All of you."

"We should sell sex toys," Pete said, between shouts of laughter. "That would be so fucking awesome."

Andy reached behind the counter and grabbed the banking, and disappeared out to the storeroom with his pack, the banking deposit bags and the banking, and Patrick whimpered with embarrassment.

Pete elbowed Patrick, a moment later, and said, "I'll serve customers. You go out the back."

Patrick glanced across at Joe, who seemed to be measuring up the store for the sex toy display case, and shrugged.

"Go," Pete hissed.

Patrick pushed the storeroom door open, and Andy looked up from where he was sitting at the folding garden chair and table that he used for cashing up. The banking was sitting untouched on the table in front of him.

The storeroom wasn't very big, so when Andy stood up, he was right in front of Patrick, close enough to push the door closed solidly.

He leaned forward, barely touching Patrick, but close enough to whisper, "You recommended a glass anal screw? You like them?"

Random hairs from Andy's beard prickled Patrick's neck, and Andy's breath was warm on his ear.

"Um, yeah," Patrick whispered back.

"I had to stand there, in front of two of our friends and some random dyke, and find out that you get off on glass anal screws," Andy hissed. "Do you have any fucking idea what was going through my head? I was picturing you, naked and face down on my bed, with me sliding something cold and hard into your ass. Cold and hard and slippery."

Andy pushed him back against the storeroom door with a 'thud', and a cheer went up from the front of the store, from Pete and Joe, then Joe's voice asked, "What's an anal screw?"

Patrick was a wreck. He didn't know whether to scream with frustration, or get down on his knees and beg. He was so turned on he could barely think, and he wasn't going to be walking anywhere in public without something substantial, like the complete works of RobXrt JordXn, in front of him for camouflage.

"Please?" Patrick whispered, and Andy's lips brushed against his ear.

"Please, what? Please do that to you?"

"Oh, fuck, yes."

Andy kissed Patrick, the slowest, hottest fucking kiss ever, making Patrick grab randomly at Andy's shoulders, just to keep himself upright. He had no idea why they'd waited so fucking long to do this, because this was obviously the best fucking idea.

Someone rapped on the other side of the storeroom door, right beside Patrick's head, making Patrick jump and bite Andy's tongue.

"Owfuckow," Andy swore.

"Hey," Pete said through the door. "Not wanting to rain on your happiness parade or anything, but I thought I should point out there're customers in the store and that while I suspect that Andy is wonderfully discreet, I can guarantee, from a few years of close intimacy, that Patrick is a noisy fucker."

Patrick banged his head back against the storeroom door. "Go away," he said. "Now."

Andy planted one hand on the door and leaned against Patrick, and fuck, he wasn't the only one who was turned on.

"How noisy?" Andy asked, his voice low. "Can you keep it down? Because I don't think either of us are getting out of this storeroom any other way."

"I'll try," Patrick said.

Andy dragged his teeth across Patrick's neck, scraping the skin, then he pulled away from Patrick far enough to get his hands between them and undo Patrick's jeans.

Patrick's jeans crumpled around his knees, then Andy's hands crept under the edge of his T-shirt, palms smoothing across his sides, fingers brushing up his ribs, moving slowly, so that Patrick shivered.

In the front of the store, Pete served a customer, the register drawer banging closed, and Joe grappled with the basics of anal sex toys, saying, "What? Is it really made of glass? And why would a girl want one?"

Andy's lips pressed against Patrick's ear. "My place, tonight. You and me, in my bed." Andy's hands pushed Patrick's boxers down, and there was a moment of pure bliss as Andy's fingers found Patrick's cock.

"Yesyesyes," Patrick gasped, because with how he was feeling, it was going to be over embarrassingly soon.

"Turn around," Andy whispered, stepping back and almost colliding with the folding chair behind him.

Patrick thought about arguing, because damn it, Andy was getting undressed, but on the other hand, the quicker he complied, the sooner he'd be naked from the waist down and facing away from Andy…

Damn, Andy didn't rustle through his pack, and that was probably a good call, with Joe, Pete and an unknown number of customers listening. Patrick would be up for fucking with Pete listening, and Joe must be desensitized to the whole thing, since Pete didn't have a real bedroom door, but the customers wouldn't necessarily be so cool.

Patrick almost fell over, with his jeans and underwear around his knees, but he managed to get himself braced against the door. The first touch of Andy's hands on his hips was gentle, then one hand pushed up, under Patrick's T-shirt, to his shoulder, gripping tightly.

The other hand drifted across Patrick's buttock, and Andy whispered, "I know there are people around, but you still have to tell me if you want me to stop, okay?"

"Don't stop."

Andy's breathing was harsh in Patrick's ear, as the length of one of his fingers slid down the crack of Patrick's ass, and Andy growled, "Okay, not stopping." His fingertips circled, behind Patrick's balls, then back, across Patrick's ass, and one finger pressed in slowly.

"Touch yourself," Andy whispered. "Can you do that for me?"

Andy moved, cock rubbing against Patrick's hip, trailing wetness, and fuck, Andy was grinding against Patrick, pushing a finger in, breath roaring in his ear, and Patrick grabbed his own cock with one hand and clamped the other one over his mouth.

"What do you think they're doing back there?" Joe asked, in the front of the store, and Patrick bit his hand hard enough to draw blood in his attempt to stay quiet.

"Shh, I'm trying to listen," Pete said. "Hi, can I help you with that book? That'll be $6.99."

"Gonna fuck you so slow and hard," Andy whispered. "Wanna find out how to make you scream."

The finger inside Patrick moved, pushing and curling, hitting the fucking jackpot, and it was all fucking over. Patrick bit down on the webbing of his hand, jerked at his cock with his other hand hard, and came over the back of the storeroom door, Andy's arms wrapped tightly around him, holding him upright.

"Go Team Patrick," Pete called out, from the front of the store. "Good one!"

"Did he just…? How could you tell?" Joe asked. "I didn't hear anything."

"Psychically connected," Pete said. "Hi there. Did you want to buy that RobXn HXbb?"

"Do you know when the next in the series is released?" an unfamiliar voice asked, and Patrick rested his forehead against the storeroom door and thought about killing both Pete and Joe.

Except Andy hadn't come yet, and he was jerking himself off against Patrick's hip, knuckles bumping against Patrick, forehead pressed against Patrick's shoulder.

Normally, Patrick would get pretty strident if someone was planning on taking those kind of liberties with his skin and clothes, but he had a feeling that he was heading somewhere none of the rules applied with Andy, and besides, they weren't going anywhere except directly to Andy's place and bed, so it didn't matter if he smelled of come.

Andy whimpered, just once, and then come trickled down Patrick's thigh, hot and wet, and Patrick's cock hadn't really had enough, and wanted more.

Andy half-squatted, half-fell, and bit and licked at Patrick's thigh.

"Not helping," Patrick said, turning enough that his cock collided with Andy's forehead.

Andy's thumbs dug into Patrick's hips, and for a moment Patrick thought Andy was going to suck him, then Andy shook his head slowly and stood up.

"Let's get out of here."

No food preparation area utilized by Joe could exist without paper towels, so after Patrick had done his jeans back up, he grabbed a handful and wiped down the back of the storeroom door, thus proving he was possibly slightly more considerate than Pete. Only slightly, of course, because if he truly cared about other people's squeamishness, he wouldn't have made the mess in the first place.

When Patrick opened the door and walked out into the store, Joe applauded and Pete jumped at Patrick, arms around Patrick's neck, legs around his waist, knocking him backwards into Andy.

The three of them went down, onto the carpet, at the feet of the bemused customer browsing the gaming tie-ins, and Patrick hugged Pete back.

Pete buried his face against Patrick's neck and sniffed, then lifted his head to grin at Patrick and Andy. "Hi," Pete said. "You two going home now?"

"That's the plan," Patrick said. "Could you get off me?"

The customer stepped over Patrick's legs disapprovingly, and stalked out of the store.

Pete shuffled backwards, down Patrick, and his grin got wider. "You smell damned funky. What the fuck did you two do?"

Andy pulled his legs out from under Patrick and got to his feet, then hauled Pete off Patrick. "Thanks for covering for Patrick at the store, Pete."

Pete hugged Andy. "Anything to help out. And don't worry, I'll make Patrick tell me, next time I get him alone."

Patrick retrieved his pack from under the counter, and his keys and phone from the drawer under the register, then followed Andy out of the store.

In Andy's car, Patrick said, "You know, I had a List of Hate for today. I'm kind of hoping it's over now, and that Pete and Joe were the last things on it."

"I can imagine it's been a shitty day for you. Mine's merely been… frustrating."

Patrick glanced at Andy and grinned. "Really? I've had Pete torturing me all day. Then there was the Spencer thing to deal with. We got a shipment of romance novels and meditation tapes that had to be sorted out. The register drawer wouldn't open all morning because Joe put food in it yesterday. Ryan glared at me on his way past the store, and I'd swear I've still got burn marks. And Mikey arrived during his lunch break, and believe me, Mikey and Pete weren't as quiet as we were. Joe turned up, with snacks, because apparently Pete had promised him some kind of floor show with you."

"Mikey and Pete weren't on the fridge?" Andy asked.

"No, I believe on the floor. Why are we driving to my place, not yours?"

"Supplies," Andy said. "You do have essential equipment, don't you? You wouldn't endorse a product to that nice lesbian when you didn't own one, would you?"

Patrick slumped back in his seat. "Hi Mom. You exchange vegan recipes with Andy while I collect my sex toys. Won't be long."

"The thing is, you could say that to your mom," Andy said. "And all she'd want to know is how long we've been sleeping together."

"I don't want to say that to my mom!" Patrick said, far too loudly. "Really! I'd rather not talk about my sex toys, or hers, with her ever again!"

"Your mom is cool," Andy said. "And she does have some great recipes."

"Argh," Patrick said. "List of Hate, new entry."

Patrick's mom, who considered Andy a _nice boy_, did drag Andy off to the kitchen to force packets of frozen lasagna on him while Patrick emptied his pack onto his bed, then refilled it with toys, his laptop and phone recharger, and a change of clothes.

His pack clinked faintly, as he hugged his mom goodbye. "Won't be back tonight," Patrick said.

"Are you crashing at Pete's?" his mom asked, with the faintly concerned look that Patrick's semi-residence at Pete's apartment sometimes gave her.

"Um, no, Andy's place," Patrick said.

Patrick might fail at sub-text reading, but his mom was an expert. Her eyebrows shot up, and she swung around to look at Andy. "This is new," she said. "When did this all happen?"

"Going now," Patrick said, grabbing Andy's arm and dragging him out of the kitchen. "Not talking about this."

"Bye, Andy," Patrick's mom called out. "Welcome to the family. Don't bother bringing Patrick back in a hurry."

"How did she know?" Patrick asked, getting back into Andy's car, pack between his feet. "How the fuck can she tell?"

"One, you smell like you've just had sex," Andy said, reversing the car out onto the road. "Two, you have bite marks on your neck. Three, you look so happy, you're almost levitating. Want me to keep going?"

"Fuck you," Patrick said.

"It's all open for negotiation," Andy said. "We can certainly talk about that option."

Patrick groaned, and said, "Can I jerk off in your car?"

"Not unless you want me to crash it," Andy said. "Might be a good idea to not distract me too much."

Patrick sat in silence, trying not to think too much about what they were about to do, until Andy parked his car outside the house he shared.

"Um, there's one thing," Andy said. "Your List of Hate…"

"What?" Patrick asked, reaching for his pack.

"I was the first person to leave the house this morning, and I know Rossman didn't start work until midday, and Matt the Asshole had the day off."

Patrick froze, the car door open. "And?"

"I'm not sure what sort of condition my room will be in."

Patrick got out of the car. "Your housemates will have trashed your room?"

Andy looked embarrassed, which was something that happened so rarely that Patrick couldn't actually recall having seen it before. "Believe me, that would be a good option. They knew I was hoping you'd come home with me tonight, and they might have decided that, based on having put up with me talking about you for some considerable time, that they should, um, help. Or seek revenge."

Patrick leaned against the top of Andy's car. "Some considerable time, hey? Exactly how long?"

Andy closed his car door. "Do you want to hear this?"

"Absolutely."

"Since Joe first brought you along to gaming, and you were regrettably underage."

Patrick slung his pack over his shoulder and grinned at Andy. "Let's go and see what your long-suffering housemates have done to your room."

The house wasn't empty, but everyone who was home seemed to be in their own rooms with the doors closed, which Patrick was grateful for. At the door to Andy's room, Andy held up a hand, and Patrick stayed back as Andy pushed the door open cautiously with his foot.

Patrick could smell something cloying and sweet coming from the room, and he wrinkled his nose. "Did they jello-and-frosting your bed?" he asked Andy, as Andy peered around the door, then slammed the door shut. "Joe did that to Pete once."

"They'd have to use agar-agar jello, which is a bit expensive," Andy pointed out. "This is worse. Much worse."

He opened the door again, and stood aside to let Patrick look inside.

The ceiling of the room was packed with pink helium-filled balloons, dangling ribbons, and the blankets on the bed were pulled back, the sheet covered in what looked and smelled horribly like rose petals.

"No," Patrick said, and he clapped a hand over his mouth to stop himself from laughing.

"Yes," Andy said resignedly. "I have no fucking idea where they got the satin sheets from, but whoever lent them is going to regret it when we've finished with them."

Andy lent back out, into the hallway and called out, "Nice one! Now all of you turn up your music and put your headphones on!"

The door with the Hellboy poster opened a crack, and Matt peered out. "Did you like it?"

"Very classy," Andy said. "Fuck off now, Matt."

"Okay. Hi, Patrick."

"Hi, Matt," Patrick said. "You made my List of Hate today."

"I feel honored," Matt said, then he closed his bedroom door again.

Patrick put down his pack in Andy's room, and watched Andy scoop the worst of the rose petals off the bed and onto the floor.

"Know what the ironic thing is?" Andy said, wiping his hands on his shirt and standing in front of Patrick.

Patrick shook his head, not sure he could talk without laughing.

Andy rubbed gentle knuckles against Patrick's cheek. "Later on, when it's dark, I was going to get candles out, because I've got this fantasy about how you'd look like that, the shadows on your skin, when you're flushed and red."

"Oh, fuck, that's how you set fire to yourself," Patrick said, and not laughing wasn't an option. He sat down on the edge of the bed, doubled over and clutching at his stomach, and gave in to the laughter.

Andy slid across the bed beside him and poked him in the ribs. "That wasn't actually a solo event, you know."

Patrick took a deep breath, and tried to stop laughing. "Like that makes it any fucking better. Now it makes it look like you break out the candles for everyone you fuck. Welcome to the fucking list, Andy."

The look of horror on Andy's face was so fucking classic that Patrick collapsed back on the bed and surrendered to the laughter completely.


	10. Outside of a Dog

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [outside of a dog](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/outside+of+a+dog)  
  
---|---  
  
Title: Outside of a Dog  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Rating: It's going to be for grownups only. Expect sex.  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.

 

Chapter Ten

Late afternoon sun fought it out with the ambient dust in Andy's room to tangle in the dangling pink ribbons of the balloons, and if Patrick wanted to avoid laughing again, he'd better either take his glasses off or close his eyes.

His glasses clattered onto the floor, and the hilarious balloonscape disappeared into a muted blur, then Andy bit at just the right place on Patrick's neck, and Patrick closed his eyes anyway and groaned, because it felt so fucking good.

The satin sheet under his bare shoulders was stupidly slippery and had bits of squelchy rose petals embedded in it, and Patrick would have been having traction problems if Andy didn't have a solid grip on him. But Andy had Patrick securely held down; one hand wrapped around Patrick's wrists and held above his head, the other hand in Patrick's hair and holding his head still, and one knee between Patrick's thighs and planted firmly on the dragged-down crotch of Patrick's jeans. Pinned down. Not moving at all. Kissing Patrick senseless. Biting his neck. Driving him fucking crazy.

"Fuck, Andy," Patrick said. "Are you trying to kill me deliberately? Or is this all unintentional?"

Andy loomed over Patrick, letting go of Patrick's hair long enough to push his own out of the way. Andy without his glasses looked naked, early morning and vulnerable. He grinned at Patrick.

"This is deliberate, but don't die yet."

Patrick tried squirming, managing to get his chest in contact with Andy's, smearing sweat between them. Andy's jeans were undone as well, which meant when Andy ground down against Patrick, during the next kiss, Patrick got some actual fucking friction, some contact, and it felt so unbelievably good.

Patrick's groan was deep and loud, against Andy's mouth, and Patrick found himself released from Andy's grip suddenly as Andy scrambled off the bed to strip.

Very occasionally, Patrick didn't need an actual invitation. He dragged his jeans and boxers off, almost falling off the bed because of the crazy satin sheet.

Then, seconds later, they rolled across the bed, tangling arms and legs, cocks riding together between their bellies, wilted rose petals stuck in unlikely places, and Patrick thought it might actually be possible to burst from wanting and needing and having.

"Can you wait?" Andy asked, his voice steady even though his cock was hard as rock against Patrick's belly.

"What am I waiting for?" Patrick asked. "Because I'm not waiting for Christmas, but I could manage five minutes."

Andy chuckled. "Can you wait long enough for me to roll you over?"

Patrick swallowed, and Andy said, "Or I could blow you first...?"

"Do it," Patrick said. "If I lose it, it doesn't matter, does it?"

Andy was close enough that, even without glasses on, Patrick could still see him clearly, and he looked indulgent more than anything else.

"Come your brains out the instant I touch you, if you want to," Andy said. "It all works for me."

The glasses that Patrick found weren't his, so the world was a little odd, though still more in focus than with no glasses, and Patrick tossed the larger of his anal screws on the bed, along with the pump pack of silicon lube. The owners of the satin sheets were going to regret ever lending Matt, or whoever, their best pink bed linen, because that stuff stained like crazy.

Andy ran careful fingers over the screw, checking the surface for chips, as Patrick slithered back onto the bed, Andy's glasses sliding off his nose.

"This is not new, is it?" Andy asked, as Patrick sprawled face down on the stupid sheets, grabbing one of Andy's pillows to shove under his face.

All of a sudden, Andy was crouching over Patrick, and the screw was right in front of Patrick's face, making Patrick exceedingly glad he'd taken the time to wash all of his toys properly before shoving them in his pack.

"This looks to me like something you like to use, when you're by yourself."

The tip of the screw nudged against Patrick's bottom lip then clinked against his teeth, and Patrick groaned and nodded. "Yeah," he admitted. "Feels so good, hard and cold inside me."

The screw pushed inside his mouth for a moment, tasting of soap rather than ass, then dragged across his chin.

Andy's mouth touched Patrick's ear, whispering, "I'm going to fill your ass up, with the screw, then with my cock."

"Oh, fuck," Patrick gasped, and Andy bit at his shoulder and the cold of the screw touched his back, between his shoulder blades, then traced slowly down his spine.

The screw was heavy, resting across the small of Patrick's back, and Patrick closed his eyes and listened to the click of the lube pump pack and the hiss of the sheets as Andy slid down the bed. Lube dripped across Patrick's buttock, then down the crack of his ass, and the bed dipped.

"Still with me?" Andy asked, and the weight of the screw was gone.

"Barely," Patrick said, because, fuck, he was so fucking close to coming already, his whole body hurting from hanging on, his cock so hard he thought he was going to fucking die, and that was nothing compared to the burning inside his body...

The first touch made Patrick jump, and Andy spread a hand across Patrick's hip, steadying him, then the slow twist started, cold lube and glass.

Patrick tried not to thrash around on the bed, and he tried not to yell, without much success.

The screw twisted in steadily, a gentle slide and stretch that had Patrick pretty much screaming in frustration.

"Fuck," Andy said, and his knee dug into the back of Patrick's thigh and he loomed over Patrick's shoulder. "Pete was right. You're a noisy fucker, aren't you?"

Breathing was hard work, and sweat ran into Patrick's eyes when he opened them and turned his head to look at Andy.

"You… fucking… try staying quiet," Patrick said though gritted teeth. "Under the same circumstances."

Andy knelt back, clambering so he was straddling Patrick's thighs, his hands moving across Patrick's hips and buttocks, then the twisting pressure was back on the screw, sliding in easily.

"Enough," Patrick said, somewhere between 'too much' and 'heaven', and the cold twist stopped.

The noise Andy made was raw and low, and his fingers touched Patrick's ass, a flicker of contact around where the screw was a band of burning pressure, spreading lube, rubbing gently, easing the ache.

"Oh, fuck," Andy whispered. "I want…"

"What?" Patrick asked, then the rough tips of Andy's fingers were replaced by the flat slither of his tongue, slick and hot around the coldness of the screw.

Patrick's body clamped down, on the screw, short-circuiting whatever control he had left, and he ground down on the satin sheet, shuddering helplessly as he came, Andy's mouth still pushed against his ass.

"Gngh," Patrick said, once he'd stopped coming. "Gngh, gngh, gngh."

Andy flopped onto the sheet beside him. "Sure, you say that now, but that's not what you were yelling a moment ago."

"Gngh. Fuck. Was it embarrassing?" Patrick asked, pushing sweat-wet hair out of his eyes and removing a mangled rose petal from his chin.

"I don't think so," Andy said. "I'm going to consider it a set of instructions, actually, if you're ready?"

The screw twisted back out easily, and Patrick listened to what could only be the sound of Andy wiping it on the sheet. The sheet was doomed.

Andy leaned across him, to rummage through the mess in a basket beside the bed, and Patrick nuzzled at Andy's arm randomly.

After bopping Patrick on the nose with the condom he'd found, Andy tore the wrapper open with his teeth and said, "How do you want to do this?"

Andy looked up, a moment later, from rolling on the condom, and raised his eyebrows at Patrick.

"You're embarrassed?" Andy asked, and Patrick grabbed a pillow and whacked Andy with it. "We just had some seriously dirty sex, which you didn't seem to have any problems negotiating and which was unbelievably hot, and now you don't know how to ask for the next bit?"

"You're not fucking helping," Patrick said. "Are you?"

"Look, I don't have any suspension gear here, or any expertise in that stuff, but apart from that, I'm ready." Andy grabbed a squirt of lube and slapped it on his cock, and something about the way he looked at Patrick while he smeared the lube over his cock made Patrick scramble onto his side.

"You, over the top of me," Patrick explained, and Andy's smile widened.

"Oh, yeah," Andy said, and there was the inevitable moment of elbows and knees, and lube, then Andy slid sweetly into Patrick, and they both groaned.

Patrick twisted, changing angles, shoving a hand down to grab his own cock, and Andy said, "Go on, touch yourself, I wanna watch you jerk off."

He could see Andy's face, just inches from his own, and feel Andy's cock, riding his ass. Sweat mixed with lube, gluing the sheet to Patrick's side, and the smell of crushed roses was going to be forever imprinted on his brain as something improbably fucking hot.

Andy dug teeth into Patrick's shoulder and drove in harder, hitting all the right places, ripping the satin, making Patrick howl, and smashing the bed frame against the wall.

Patrick hung on, one hand on his cock, the other on the edge of the mattress to stop himself from falling off the bed, and tried to keep breathing, tried not to die right then.

He did die, just a little, when Andy's eyes slitted closed and Andy shuddered and groaned through coming, closer and more gorgeous than Patrick had ever imagined possible.

"Andy?" Patrick said, his voice coming out all tight, and Andy groaned and lifted his weight partially off Patrick, propping himself back up again.

"Go for it," Andy said.

With Andy's cock still inside him, and Andy watching his face, Patrick closed his eyes and straightened his knees, pushing his cock into his hand more firmly, and both he and Andy moaned.

"C'mon," Andy said. "Or I'm going to have to change this condom and fuck you again."

Andy rocked his hips, and fuck, he was hard again, or still, and Patrick lost it, kicking out as he came, almost crashing off the fucking bed because of the stupid fucking sheet.

He hauled himself back onto the bed, with Andy's assistance, then Andy peeled the condom off his dick and examined his anatomy with a pained look on his face.

"Oops?" Patrick said.

"Oops is about fucking right," Andy said. "Let's not do that again."

Patrick ran the few seconds when he had begun to come back over in his memory and grimaced. "Um, yeah. Next time, I'll work on not clamping down on you then falling off the bed, right?"

Andy sprawled across the bed. "Satin-fucking-sheets. Who'd have them?"

"No one, at least not these ones in particular ever again," Patrick said, dragging himself across the wrecked sheet to collapse half across Andy, face down near Andy's groin. "Are you injured?"

"Not mortally," Andy said. "But you get to top later. I'm out of action for fucking for a few hours."

"I broke you," Patrick said, and he knew sounded smug.

Andy's hand rubbed the back of Patrick's neck lightly. "You did."

The bedside light clicked on, and Patrick breathed in the thick smell of fucking, letting it get right inside his head, then crawled up Andy, to collapse down beside him.

"Hungry," Patrick said. "You know."

"Lasagna," Andy said. "You know. You could eat it frozen, directly from your mom's freezer, via my backpack, or one of us could venture out to find a microwave."

"Why don't you have a microwave in your room?" Patrick asked.

"Because I'm not Joe," Andy said, stretching up to grab the dangling ribbon of a balloon. "The real question is can we fuck entirely in cartoon duck voices?"

Patrick grabbed a ribbon too, and yanked a balloon down.


	11. Outside of a Dog

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [outside of a dog](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/outside+of+a+dog)  
  
---|---  
  
Final chapter, and it's all done.

Title: Outside of a Dog  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Rating: It's going to be for grownups only. Expect sex.  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.

The customer story in this chapter is **true**, and one of my staff also suggested the _new_ shelving system.

 

Chapter Eleven

"Why are you here?" Pete asked, unlocking the front door of Fall Out Boy and letting himself in. "You're not supposed to be here."

"Tuesday," Patrick said. "Nine o'clock, and there isn't anywhere else I'd be. Well, ten to nine, which is why I haven't opened the door to let the losers outside in yet, because no one can be so desperate to complete their Heinlein retrospective collection that they can't wait another ten minutes. And I'm here because your ability to be late is legendary so I always make a point of turning up on time. Why the fuck are you early?"

Pete tossed his pack behind the counter and stole Patrick's coffee, the coffee that Andy had bought Patrick when he'd dropped him off.

"I'm here," Pete said in a long-suffering tone, "because you're supposed to still be in bed, being screwed senseless. If there's ever a morning to be late, or completely missing, this is it. You're not doing it right, Patrick."

Patrick smacked Pete and took his coffee back. "C'mon, do you really think Andy will skip work? Or be late? You have remembered who we're talking about, right?"

Pete shrugged, then glanced around the store for the first time. "Why are there pink balloons here?" His grin was particularly evil. "Not that I'm complaining…"

"Matt filled Andy's room with balloons. We ran through all the possible options of things to do with them last night, so I figured I should bring as many as I could fit into Andy's car into the store, for you to play with."

Pete slung his arm around Patrick's shoulder. "See, this is why we're soulmates. One, because you bring me helium-filled balloons, and two, because when you say you tried all the possible options with the balloons last night, I know that while that there might be things that I'd do that you wouldn't, fucking in duck voices was definitely covered."

"It was," Patrick said. "And it freaked out Andy's housemates, which was even better."

Pete's arm tightened, and his free hand poked at the not insignificant marks on Patrick's neck. "So, I've heard stories about Our Andy, above and beyond the time he set fire to himself. Stories about how he's only got one vice, and while the rest of us are frittering our time away on irrelevancies, he's honed his skills to a superhuman level."

Patrick pushed his glasses more securely up his nose. "If those people think Andy doesn't fritter his time away on irrelevancies, they might want to look at his comic collection."

Pete pinched Patrick, on the back of his neck, and said, "Give, or I'm going to tell you all about Mikey, and how we had sex in the kitchen at the apartment while Joe watched TV, and Joe didn't notice."

"Joe will kill you when he finds out," Patrick said. "And what if I want to hear? Owwww. Okay, Matt and company had set up this whole deranged honeymoon scenario, as a prank, complete with balloons, rose petals and pink satin sheets."

Pete's eyes went wide, and he grinned. "Funky. You trashed it?"

"Completely. And I kind of broke Andy by falling off the bed at a critical moment. He has actual bruises. I'm blaming the satin sheet for that one."

"He does live dangerously," Pete said. "Incinerated and bruised, and all that's ever happened to me is that time that I had to climb out of William's window naked and wait in the rain for him to throw my clothes out before I could run home."

"You would have been both incinerated and bruised if you'd been caught," Patrick said.

"Okay, three minutes until we let the losers in," Pete said. "Can you give me a summary, in fifty words or less, before the General Fucking Public ruin our day?"

"I can do better than that," Patrick said. He grabbed the bottom of his T-shirt and pulled it up, baring his belly and chest, then turned around, T-shirt bunched right up.

Pete whistled, low and dirty. "You better not show your mom or Joe that lot of bite marks."

Patrick pulled his shirt back down again. "Mild-manner bookkeeper by day, funky werewolf with a duck voice by night. It's working for me. Let the huddled masses in."

Pete opened the door, and the couple of people waiting wandered in.

Pete came back and stood beside Patrick behind the counter, and the pair of them watched one of the customers wave around a long stick with what looked like a rock taped to the top of it.

"Can I help you?" Pete asked him, when the guy waggled the stick in Pete's direction.

"No, no," the guy said. "I'll know when I've found the right book."

"Oh," Patrick said. "How?"

"I'm dowsing, you fool," the man said. "Be quiet, you're interrupting the flux."

Pete clutched onto Patrick's arm, under the counter, and Patrick kicked Pete, to stop him from laughing.

Dowsing Man paced around the store twice, his rod twitching in front of him, and Patrick watched with a blank face while Pete posted a running commentary to a blog. Patrick focused on sending out thoughts that maybe the dowsing rod might like to by an expensive collectible StXr WXrs encyclopedia.

The dowsing rod opted for a hardcover Lord of the RXngs, which made Patrick happy, and almost convulsed Pete after the customer, rod and book had left the store.

"Gandalf's staff!" Pete gasped. "The rod wanted Gandalf's staff!"

"Do you think it wanted the first one?" Patrick said. "Or the second one?"

"There were two?" Pete said. "Huh?"

"The first one fell in Moira," Patrick said. "Fighting the Balrog."

"Fuck me," Pete said. "How do you remember this shit?"

"What's the first movie Mia Kirshner's nipples ever appeared in?" Patrick asked.

"Point," Pete said. "I'm just interested in more exciting things, that's all." Pete pulled a crumpled origami figure out of his pocket and handed it to Patrick. "Hey, I picked this up on the way in. Do you want to add it to the collection?"

Patrick took the limp shape and smoothed it out on the counter, straightening its legs, and sighed.

"Okay."

He added it to the lineup of origami unicorns on the shelf behind the counter, propping it against Joe's Princess Leia figurine, the one in the bikini outfit.

"Do you want me to get Mikey to make Gerard stop?" Pete asked. "Take away his paper or something?"

Patrick looked at the row of origami unicorns. "No, it's okay. As creepy behavior goes, it's inoffensive, and it makes me feel far less guilty than Spencer's glowering, though at least he's talking to me again now. I don't mind finding a unicorn on the doorstep each morning. It's not like it's a real one, or anything."

"No," Pete said, speculatively. "That might be harder to arrange."

"I just wish the message was a little clearer," Patrick said. "Does he think I'm a replicant?"

Pete looked at Patrick. "Are you?"

Patrick frowned at Pete. "Not that I know of. Why don't you ask my mom? Oh, fuck, no, put the phone down… Mom never understands those calls from you… Pete, stop… Hi, Mom… Yes, good to talk to you too… Andy? He's fine."

Pete was doubled over, backing away from the counter, and Patrick flipped two fingers at Pete, startling the customer who walked in the store at that moment, and resigned himself to a painful debriefing from his mother on the subject of 'Nice Andy' and 'How good it was that Patrick was dating someone sensible at last.' His mother was another person who hadn't seen Andy's comic collection.

Joe's pickup parked out the front at lunch time, and Joe ambled in, waving a greeting on his way to the storeroom and fridge.

"Uh oh," Patrick said, under his breath, as Pete closed the register after serving a customer.

"What?" Pete said, just as Joe yelled.

"Pete!" Joe shouted, from the storeroom, then he appeared, looking around for customers.

When the weird guy who was collecting all the John NormXn GXr books had left with his latest purchase and the store was empty of customers, Joe leaned across the counter and grabbed Pete's T-shirt.

"How many times do I have to tell you," Joe said. "No. Fucking. On. The. Fridge. You owe me a week's worth of lunches, you miserable brat."

"But," Pete squeaked. "But."

"Don't worry, Joe," Patrick said. "I'll clean up again. No need to break Pete."

Joe let go of Pete, who kicked out hard at Patrick. "And he'll replace your lunches, won't you, Patrick?" Pete said. "Least you can do, and all, since it was you and Andy fucking on the fridge."

"No," Joe said disbelievingly. "Not both of you as well?"

"'Fraid so," Pete said. "Why don't you start dating someone between 5' 3'' and 5' 7'', since that seems to be the right height range for that fridge? Then you could fuck on the fridge too."

Joe backed away from the counter, looking frankly horrified, and Pete added, "We could stop keeping food in the fridge completely. I know that's not why we got the fridge, but I don't think anyone could have predicted the whole rampant-fucking-in-the-store thing."

Joe took off, out of the store, and Pete turned and thumped Patrick hard. "That's for leaving me to take the blame, you evil creep."

"Ow," Patrick said, only partially managing to duck the blow. "What? I cleaned up after you last time. I was going to clean up this time as well."

He shoved past Pete, heading for the storeroom, and Pete called out, "You shouldn't be fucking near food preparation areas anyway. It's unhygienic! Hi there, did you want to buy that book?"

***

"And my Cleric smites the evil troll," Pete shouted. "That's how it's done, baby. One, two, bang, turn the troll to raspberry jelly."

"Show off," Joe complained. "Fucking loaded dice."

"Take the points and run," Patrick said. "Before your own team start sizing you up for your hit points. It's been done before."

Pete looked up, and Joe and Andy were staring at him across the empty pizza boxes.

"Oops," Pete said. "Let's grab the loot from the troll and get out of here, guys. Do we want to check to see if this one has gold teeth?"

"What's the troll smell like, GM?" Andy asked.

Patrick tossed a D10 at Andy. "What the fuck do you think the troll smells like? It lives in a sewer and eats shit."

"Any gold teeth aren't worth the effort," Andy said. "Shake down the troll's pockets and let's get out of there, before the troll's big sister turns up."

Patrick let the Three Stooges sort out the goodies in the troll's pockets, including the carefully concealed plot device, and checked his watch.

"That's a good place to break for the night, since some of us have to work tomorrow," he said. "Two experience points each, and an extra point to Joe for remembering not to eat the local cuisine in any tavern where the menu is written entirely in pictograms. Pete and Andy, your characters will have recovered by the next gaming session."

Patrick packed his D&amp;D rule books into his pack, apart from the one that held the coffee table up, and went to say goodnight to Pete and Joe, pack over his shoulder.

And found himself facing a determined and furious Pete, who grabbed his T-shirt and shoved him back against the wall of the hall, thudding his pack against the crumbling plaster.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" Pete demanded.

"What?" Patrick said. "To Andy's place, Pete. You know, now we're sleeping together…"

"No you're not," Pete said, and he had the black edge to his voice that Patrick knew from the bad times they didn't talk about anymore. "This is Friday night. This is my night with you. Friday night is gaming night. I don't date or fuck on Friday nights. I stay home, and hang out with you, and you stay with me."

Over Pete's shoulder, Patrick could see Andy hovering, and Andy shrugged. Joe's bedroom closed loudly, and Joe might as well have hung a 'you're all fucking weird' sign there.

"Sure," Patrick said to Pete, because the middle ground was the safe way when Pete got strung out. "If you want me to stay, I'll stay, but we're talking about this fucked-up mess, or I'm calling your mom."

The desperation left Pete's eyes, and Pete stopped jamming Patrick against the wall quite so hard. "Okay."

Andy slid an arm around Pete's shoulders. "Pete, c'mon, let go of Patrick, and I promise I won't take him away from you tonight. Besides, I reckon you've got about ten seconds before Patrick starts punching you."

Patrick thought Andy was underestimating his patience and control. He had about twenty seconds of control left before he started hurting Pete.

Pete held both his hands up in the air suddenly, backing away from Patrick.

"We're talking about this now," Patrick said, dumping his pack in the hall and stomping into Pete's room, across the piles of clothes. "Andy? You too."

Patrick sat on the edge of Pete's mattress and took his glasses off to clean them on his T-shirt. Andy sat down on a relatively clear patch of floor, and Pete flopped onto the bed facedown.

"So," Patrick said.

Pete didn't say anything, and Andy shared an expressive and frustrated glance with Patrick.

"I know you two have got your own screwed-up intense friendship thing," Andy said. "Some weird and deranged symbiosis that I kind of understand, at least partly, if only because I'm obsessed with Patrick myself."

Patrick swung his head around, back to look at Andy again after peering worriedly at Pete's not-very-clean hair, and Andy's smile was wry.

"So, we just need to negotiate this out," Andy said. "In a way that doesn't lead to Patrick ditching both of us. Think we can do that?"

Pete lifted his head enough to nod, then kind of caterpillar-humped his way across the mattress to tackle Patrick.

Patrick didn't resist, letting Pete push him down onto the mattress for a hug, and Andy joined them a moment later, adding bony knees and elbows to the embrace.

"Stay tonight," Pete said, sounding more like himself than he had in the hallway. "Andy, too. I like Andy, he's almost like us, only not quite so fucking crazy."

"I am crazy," Andy said indignantly. "I just like to keep all the crazy on the inside, where it doesn't scare people."

Patrick hugged Pete tightly. "I still love you," he told Pete. "I'm not going to stop, just because I'm fucking Andy."

"It's not the fucking, idiot," Pete said. "It's everything else."

Patrick kissed the bit of Pete he could reach, somewhere around the top of an ear. "Okay."

Andy reached out and stroked Pete's hair, then settled his hand on Pete's neck, fingers moving slowly, and Patrick knew exactly how fucking good that felt.

Pete sighed, and some of the tension dropped out of his arms, so he that eased his death grip on Patrick. "You're not really calling Mom, are you?" Pete asked, managing to move on in even closer, so Patrick was completely crushed under his weight. "She'll just bring up the whole therapy thing again."

"Are you falling apart?" Patrick asked. "Or is this a temporary aberration?"

"Minor hiccup," Pete said. "Promise. I'll be back to normal in a bit."

Andy snorted disbelievingly, and Pete leaned across and smacked Andy. "Fuck you, Andy," Pete said. "In the universe inside my head, you're the unrequited best friend and I get Patrick."

Patrick thought about punching Pete, except he couldn't move either of his arms, he was so completely trapped.

Andy just laughed. "Suffer, loser. I waited a damned long time for this. Besides, I don't think anyone who has endured Patrick being hideous first thing in the morning would envy either of us, right?"

"What?" Patrick said. "So I don't wake up well? Or like to make decisions first thing? Or actually move before noon? Is that any reason to pick on me?"

Andy chuckled, and Pete said, "No, but it's proof of our enduring love for you that we're both planning on sleeping beside you tonight when we know you have to get up and go to work tomorrow. Okay, it's proof of my undying love for you. Andy might just want a fuck."

Patrick spat some of Pete's hair out of his mouth. "Andy might consider your presence something a hindrance there."

"Honestly," Andy said, "My undying love for Patrick is inextricably intertwined with my desire to take all of his clothes off him and make him dirty. Though, on consideration, I've known Pete for a damned long time, long enough that we don't have many secrets left."

"Fuck, yes!" Pete said. "I knew there was a reason I thought you were quiet. That was one of William's parties, wasn't it?"

"No!" Patrick said, trying to struggle out from between Andy and Pete unsuccessfully. "You two have fucked?"

"Eww, no way," Andy said. "We just happened to share the same location once, when there was a shortage of places to go. You were with some ghastly girl, that's all I remember. She kept making squeaking noises, like a kid's toy with a puncture."

"Fuck you, you tattooed freak. And you were with that vile intellectual jock prodigy, the one who went on to MIT and the moon," Pete said. "He kept calling you 'baby' and giving these breathy moans."

"The ISS," Andy said. "Not the moon, but that was him."

"Hang on!" Patrick shouted, and Andy and Pete stopped reminiscing. "Are we actually talking about what I think we're talking about?"

"What's that?" Pete asked.

"Whether or not everyone is cool with Andy and I fucking in your bed tonight?" Patrick said. "Because, hello? Does anyone want to ask me?"

"Well?" Andy and Pete asked, pretty much simultaneously.

"I'm completely cool with this," Pete added. "Being my bed and all. I'll even pretend to be asleep, if that will help."

Patrick groaned, partly in pent-up frustration with Pete, and partly because Andy was grinding up against his ass, cock riding against Patrick's hip, reminding Patrick that they hadn't fucked for far too long, like days.

"Why not?" Patrick said, and he would have shrugged if he could have moved. "Not like we haven't jerked off together, right?"

"Absolutely," Pete said. "Back when you were a funky adolescent. Lights, Andy?"

Andy disappeared, sliding off the mattress, and Patrick poked at Pete and peered at Pete's face. "Are you really not having some kind of meltdown?"

"I'm okay," Pete said. "I, um, overreacted. That's all. Sorry. I might not have ever told you how much I depend on you, but I do."

They hugged, and Patrick said, "If you're lying, I'm telling on you," then Andy tossed his pack beside the mattress and switched the overhead light off.

The room wasn't completely dark, not with the hall light shining around the edge of the curtain, so when Pete let go of Patrick enough for them both to scramble around to the other end of the mattress, Patrick got to watch Andy pull his shirt off.

"Your shirt too," Andy said, and too many hands were pushing at Patrick's work T-shirt and undoing his jeans.

Andy kissed him, beard brushing against Patrick's chin, and Pete kicked him randomly, then tossed clothing across the pair of them and onto the floor.

"Sorry," Pete said, then Pete's face pressed against Patrick's back, between his shoulder blades. "Fuck, I can hear your heart pounding."

"Shut up, Pete," Patrick said, when Andy gave him a chance to breathe, then Andy pushed him onto his back, making Pete squawk indignantly at being squashed.

Patrick kicked his jeans the rest of the way off, then made a very undignified noise when Andy slid a hand inside Patrick's underwear, curling gentle fingers around Patrick's cock.

"Fuck, that better be Andy's hand," Patrick gasped, and Andy laughed around teeth set in the skin of Patrick's neck.

"I know, not that kind of a hug," Pete said, his voice sounding rough. "I can guarantee that's not my hand, since I know where both of mine are."

The tip of Andy's tongue slid over the indentations he'd made in Patrick's neck, then he murmured, "Let go, really let go, I want you to be so turned on."

Sweat slid down Patrick's ribs, where he was sandwiched between Pete and Andy--too much body heat, too much friction. Pete's arm was moving rhythmically, brushing against Patrick's elbow, and Patrick fumbled a hand across Andy's belly, to find Andy's cock.

Andy groaned, pushing his cock into Patrick's hand, and Patrick would have been happy with just that, to come with Andy kissing him and Pete gasping against his shoulder.

"Fuck, Andy, if you don't go down on him, I'm going to," Pete said, and Patrick whined, because fuck it, Pete wasn't supposed to play dirty like that.

"Shh," Andy said, then he was sliding down Patrick in the gloom, licking at the sweat on Patrick's belly, finding the head of Patrick's cock, his mouth slippery and hot.

Andy pushed at Patrick's thighs, and Patrick lifted them apart clumsily, muscles shaking, everything becoming sharp and desperate as Andy eased fingertips inside.

"Keep the noise down," Pete said, pushing two fingers into Patrick's mouth, but it sounded like it had been Pete that had been shouting, the way his voice rasped against Patrick's ear.

"I am being quiet," Patrick attempted to say, around fingers that tasted suspiciously like Pete had been jerking off with them, except that Andy did something pretty fucking amazing, with fingers, tongue and teeth, and all that came out of Patrick's mouth was a sustained yelp.

Pete slammed his mouth against Patrick's, climbing across so he was hovering over Patrick, sealing their lips together, stealing Patrick's breath, and managing to muffle Patrick.

Andy stopped frying Patrick's brain, easing fingers out of him and drifting the edges of teeth up his cock, leaving Patrick unbearably frustrated and potentially able to think for the first time in a while.

Pete stopped kissing him suddenly, when Andy loomed over Pete's shoulder, and Pete's jolt and squeak gave Patrick the distinct impression that Andy had grabbed hold of Pete somewhere and wrenched hard.

"My turn," Andy said, and the light from the hall was enough for Patrick to watch Andy kiss Pete hard.

"Oh fuck, oh, fuck, oh fuck," Patrick said, because if he hadn't been right on the edge of coming before, then watching Andy tongue-fuck Pete's mouth would have put him there.

"What?!" he said, when Pete and Andy stopped kissing, and both turned to glare at him.

"Ball gag?" Pete said. "Some people just need them."

"I'm considering it," Andy said. "Except…"

"I know," Pete agreed. "I'd be conflicted too."

Patrick opened his mouth, about to really complain, then closed it again quickly.

"On your side," Andy said to Patrick, sliding off the side of the mattress and reaching for his pack.

Patrick shoved Pete across, toward the wall, making room for Andy, because if he injured Andy again, it might be more than even Andy would be willing to be put up with.

"Fucker," Pete said, pushing Patrick back, and Pete won the skirmish for ownership of the mattress because Andy touched cool, slippery fingers to Patrick's ass and Patrick stopped wrestling with Pete and gasped.

"Yeah?" Pete asked. "Where's he touching you?"

Two fingers pushed in, and Patrick thrashed around on the bed, distantly aware of Andy saying, "Make yourself useful and open that," to Pete.

Pete fucking crawled across Patrick, right across him, and the tiny part of Patrick's mind that wasn't fried by Andy's fingers tried to grapple with the idea that _Pete was rolling a condom down Andy's cock_.

"Don't say a fucking thing," Pete said, sliding into Patrick's arms. "Because this time it really is that kind of a hug."

Patrick hung onto Pete--fingernails, sweat and hipbones--while Andy moved behind him, steady hands on his hip, mouth on his shoulder, slow nudge of cock.

Patrick took a deep, long breath in, then let it out, his eyes closing. Andy's cock eased into him slowly, far too slowly, and Pete pushed sweaty hair off his face, kissing his cheek, sliding a knee over his hip so their cocks pushed together.

Andy rocked, slowly, slowly, his hand stretched out to hang onto Pete's shoulder, whispering and gasping against Patrick's ear, his cock so hard inside Patrick it almost hurt, the best thing ever.

Pete ground against Patrick, swearing and moaning, one hand slipping between their bodies, grabbing at their cocks. He bit at Patrick's lip, sharp taste of blood, and Patrick could feel his come, spreading across skin, while Pete jerked and moaned.

With Pete wiped out, out of breath and hanging on uselessly to Patrick, Andy worked his hand in between them, his breathing tight as his hand found Patrick's cock, slippery and slick.

"Still with me?" Andy asked, and it was a fucking good question in Patrick's opinion.

"Barely," Patrick gasped. "Gonna come."

"Yeah," Andy said. "Yeah."

Then suddenly, it wasn't slow rocking, and Andy was fucking him hard, climbing inside him, both of them shouting and Pete whimpering.

Something let go, inside Patrick's head, and he was floating, vaguely aware of Pete stroking his face and Andy pounding into him, while time stopped existing and he hung suspended forever on the edge of coming, his body caught in heat and burning and just plain fucking ecstasy.

Then Andy squeezed his cock one last time, and he began to come, too hard, more than he could have coped with, except that Andy and Pete were holding him, stopping him from slipping away.

Andy pulled out gently, then a moment later he was pressed against Patrick's back again, his hand running down Patrick's arm, touching everywhere, reassuring and steady.

A blanket settled over them, pulled up by someone who had some motor control, but not even Pete spoke.

Patrick burrowed his nose in, against some random part of Pete, and breathed in. They all smelled seriously good.

***

Patrick poked at his bowl of cereal but he couldn't raise the energy to complain that it wasn't his favorite brand, not at fuck-off o'clock in the morning.

Andy put a mug of coffee in front of him on the table, and backed away carefully.

Coffee helped, and Patrick's brain had begun to defrost, when Joe staggered out into the kitchen, rubbing at crazy-bed-head-hair.

Andy poured Joe a coffee, just as Pete bounded into the kitchen, wearing only a towel.

"Morning, darlings," Pete said, kissing Andy on the cheek, then taking Patrick's hat off and kissing the top of Patrick's head.

Patrick jammed his hat back on and flicked a spoonful of cereal at Pete.

"Fuck off and die, Pete," Patrick said.

Joe watched with widening eyes as Pete draped himself around Andy, who didn't fight him off.

"No," Joe said. "Not a chance. The noise last night had to be Pete and Patrick having a huge argument, and Pete storming out, then Patrick and Andy fucking in Pete's bed."

Pete grinned. "No, Joe, wrong reading of the sound effects."

"I feel sick," Joe announced. "We were four friends, and now suddenly we're one friend and a fucking three-way fuck fest."

"We're not doing that," Patrick said, around a mouthful of cereal. "That's disturbing."

"I wouldn't fuck Pete," Andy said indignantly. "I have far too much taste for that."

Andy grabbed Pete's ass, through the towel, for emphasis.

"And Pete is my best friend," Patrick said. "We don't do that."

Patrick watched Joe's early morning confusion with malicious amusement, because Joe in the morning shouldn't have to work out how Pete could be bitten and scratched and very obviously just-laid, and really, actually making out with Andy in the kitchen, in the face of their denials.

"I'm. Going. Back. To. Bed," Joe said. "Forever."

Joe's door slammed hard.

Patrick waited for Andy and Pete to stop, then he said, "Pete and I been talking about the alphabetizing of books at the store. We think we can do it even better."

***

At the store, fortified by the real coffees that Patrick had demanded Andy supply them with, Pete and Patrick tackled the re-shelving of the books.

"Fucking brilliant idea," Pete said, as he pulled the 'B's of the shelves and stacked them on the floor, in order. "Worthy of the very best twisted imaginations. A classic four-in-the-morning stroke of genius. I'm proud of myself."

Andy sat at the counter, groaning to himself. "You know, I'm only letting you two get away with this because of last night."

"Shut up," Patrick said, stacking the 'C's. "We'll put the books back, if the customers cry."

"What are you doing?" Brendon asked, from the doorway. "Is it safe to even ask?"

"Re-shelving," Pete called out. "Want to help? We're going to be the first bookstore in the world to use the QWERTY keyboard for our stock shelving."

They could hear Brendon's laughter, all the way down the sidewalk to the Panic store.

"Okay," Pete said. "That's the 'A's cleared. "I'll go get the 'Q's."

"What are you doing about the secondary letters?" Andy called out, and when Patrick looked up from the 'D's, Andy was peering at the keyboard. "You know, for ordering inside the letter category?"

"We're doing it right," Patrick said.

"QQ, then QW, then QE, and so on," Pete said. "We sorted this out last night, while you were asleep. If you have a problem with this, you should have been awake at four in the morning, to voice your opinion."

Andy looked from Patrick, to Pete, then back to Patrick.

"I think I'll drop around to the comic store, see if there's anything new in, if that's okay," Andy said. "You two will be fine here by yourself, won't you?"

"Sure," Pete said, putting down the armful of books he was carrying so he could hug Patrick, who pushed him away.

"We'll be fine," Patrick said. "Bring back food."

***

At the end of the afternoon, with the store completely reorganized, Patrick sat on the counter and surveyed the shelves happily. Mikey was staring at the shelves, nodding to himself, Pete hanging off his back and babbling at him over his shoulder.

"See? It's intuitive," Pete said. "All you have to do is move your fingers, like on a keyboard, and you know where a letter is."

Joe, dressed for a Saturday night of doing whatever it was he didn't talk about, leaned against the counter beside Patrick.

"What do you think?" Patrick asked.

"It's fucked," Joe said. "But I'm really impressed. We're guaranteeing every customer is going to make contact with the sales staff, and who knows, we might get known as that deranged book store with the crazy shelving system."

Mikey hitched Pete higher, right up onto his back, and Pete pulled down the last of the balloons from earlier in the week. "Got it!" Pete shouted, startling the guy with the dowsing rod, who was back for another book. "We'll be out the back for a while, okay?"

Andy, who was perched on the seat behind the register, leaned forward. "It's cool, Joe. We took all the food out of the fridge today. All that's in there now is your beer."

Patrick helped a bewildered customer who was looking for the fucking twinkling vampire book and had been defeated by the new shelving system, and Andy sold a very tacky-looking werewolf romance to the dowsing man, who didn't care about shelving systems, since he bought his books randomly.

Then Joe said, "Hang on, the beer in the fridge isn't going to be a good idea, is it?"

The sound of the fridge door rocking open and the beer falling out was impressive.

 

END


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